PVE Raiding Compendium - Page 58

Turbo Moses · 02/14/08, 10:30 PM

Ah yes, the fact that haste doesn't technically increase your damage, just the rate at which you deal it had slipped my mind when I was writing that. Regardless, I'm ecstatic that haste is finally a gemmable stat, something I've been hoping for since it first started popping up on items, given, in my head, I woulda thought it more useful to have it on blues or something to make those blue/purple/green gems more valuable, as well as their slots, but it's nice to know that most Sunwell caster gear is devoid of blue slots anyway. I'm glad Blizzard has gotten itemization down much better these days. Plus it'd be hard to get those Sapphires and Amethysts away from other classes anyway.

Also, the haste ceiling I was referring to before was the level at which damage begins to outperform it again, and I'm pretty sure that the higher hit you get, you do see slightly less DPS returns from it, that is, the amount of DPS you gain from 0 hit to 1 hit is greater the amount of DPS you gain from 201 hit to 202 hit.

Nektheritos · 02/15/08, 4:52 AM

Bringing the subject onto gemable haste, what gem will now be better for an affliction warlock at the affliction hit-cap to gem for when looking for yellow sockets (when the socketbonus is just too tasty to not ignore), dmg/hit or dmg/haste? The hit would only really benefit the immolates/shadow bolts while haste would now help with the GCD, even though the gain from it seems slightly less in comparision.

Bokkie · 02/15/08, 6:35 AM

Even for affliction locks, the shadow bolts will be a very big portion of your total dps. So hit is still very important as stated already several times in this thread.
Also, lowering the global cooldown, will give affliction locks effectively more shadowbolt time between keeping up dots, making hit for your bolts even a bigger factor in the equation.

Given that, I would surely go for hitcap on shadowbolts before taking in haste. But you can use the sheet now, since it was updated with the 2.4 haste model, to see what stat is more beneficial to you with your current gear and stats.

Flamingcloud · 02/15/08, 12:12 PM

Originally Posted by 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.

I am not so sure number 3 is true... However, until you find gear that has only damage with no hit/crit/haste it will always be true that destro locks scale better.

Cerine · 02/15/08, 12:32 PM

Even then, due to the item cost of stacking a single stat, you'll get less out of an item with only damage than someone who can use dam, crit & haste and uses an item of the same item level with damage crit & haste.

Arelenda · 02/15/08, 1:50 PM

Originally Posted by Flamingcloud

I am not so sure number 3 is true... However, until you find gear that has only damage with no hit/crit/haste it will always be true that destro locks scale better.

Destro gets around 106% on shadowbolt, which is what they spam the entire time. Plus, it can crit, effectively doubling your spellpower bonus in that case. At end game, 30-35 crit chance is pretty common for destro (raid buffed). So roughly 130-140% (106*1.30) is a good estimate.

Affliction gets more than that on UA and Corruption (150%ish, roughly? I'm sure people will be able to give me the right numbers), which they cast every 18 seconds, but significantly less on SB (3/3.5=86%), which they use in between.

I'd say destro wins but barely. I'm sure people can run the numbers, I did it a while ago but didn't keep the calculations.

doogless · 02/16/08, 1:54 PM

It's more than 86% because of Shadow Mastery.

Krazen · 02/16/08, 2:24 PM

Originally Posted by 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)

Gul'dan + Bloodgem will still be a lousy combo, compared to Gul'dan + Icon. The power of the Icon is magnified by its more powerful on use that can always be synced up with Gul'dan's haste buff.

galzohar · 02/16/08, 2:42 PM

Looking at lieuler's spreadsheet with my baseline stats (with some adjustments for aff/destro switches), taking out all the buffs for destruction for sake of comparison (as affliction usually lacks buffs due to being in the tank group):

Destruction: 0.823 dps/spelldmg
Affliction: 0.715 dps/spelldmg

So yes, afflction scales much worse with hit/crit/haste and doesn't even scale as well with spell damage. The only way for afflction to do any good dps is to spam DoTs on multiple targets, which just doesn't happen usually, and even when it does, depending on your gear level, may not be enough of a DPS gain to warrant affliction spec especially when considering it'll cause less spells to benefit from improved shadowbolt. for personal dps at least.

Affliction might scale better than destruction with spell damage with multi-dotting, though, but it doesn't really matter since even if it did scale better with spell damage it still doesn't scale with the gear upgrades that exist in the game.

Gugarasch · 02/17/08, 6:59 AM

Since I started to read this thread and since my guild started to have one Destro Lock in the Raid, there always occured the same question to me. How can you do proper DPS as Destro without a Shadowpriest? Maybe it's just our Destros, who wont stop whining, if they are not in a SP Group. But you can also see it in our WWS Records. Destro never has 100% DPS Time on an encounter, because of Life Tap and DPS Time e.g. Damage Output gets lower if he has no Shadowpriest in his group due to more Life Tap if Pots are on CD.

Me as an Affliction Lock with tanks as groupmembers do lower DPS but I don't have to be supported that much. We only got two SP slots in our Raidsetup and that is why we got only one Destro in the Raid and keep having 2 Affliction. So how is it possible to do DPS without SP as destro? Or doesn't a Destro without Shadowpriest become as *weak* as affliction?

Andeh-N · 02/17/08, 7:51 AM

Originally Posted by Gugarasch

So how is it possible to do DPS without SP as destro?

Whilst I rarely have to raid without a Shadow Priest in my group, on the occasion that I do it isn't really the end of the world. Just looking over some of our WWS reports, I get about 10k mana back on average for most Hyjal & BT fights, that's about 5-6 Life Taps for me personally, I'd imagine it isn't too far off of what it'd be for another Warlock too.

So if you figure that you have to LT 7 times extra in a fight without a Shadow Priest, which is about 10.5 seconds, though realistically it'd be safe to say about 12, due to lag. It doesn't cut into Destruction DPS so much so that it renders you useless.

TL;DR answer is 'Use pots (which you should anyway!)'

ankido · 02/17/08, 8:58 AM

I have a question for everyone. There's a debate going on in the guild about Immolation. Does immolation fit in a warlocks rotation as a 21-40 raiding spec? Someone in the guild did the math and came up with an outragous number showing that immolation does more damage then spamming shadow bolt. Can someone please help me out here and help end this debate with SB vs Immo. Are these two spells good to use together or is it best to ditch immo and spam SB?

Arelenda · 02/17/08, 9:22 AM

Originally Posted by Gugarasch

Since I started to read this thread and since my guild started to have one Destro Lock in the Raid, there always occured the same question to me. How can you do proper DPS as Destro without a Shadowpriest? Maybe it's just our Destros, who wont stop whining, if they are not in a SP Group. But you can also see it in our WWS Records. Destro never has 100% DPS Time on an encounter, because of Life Tap and DPS Time e.g. Damage Output gets lower if he has no Shadowpriest in his group due to more Life Tap if Pots are on CD.

Me as an Affliction Lock with tanks as groupmembers do lower DPS but I don't have to be supported that much. We only got two SP slots in our Raidsetup and that is why we got only one Destro in the Raid and keep having 2 Affliction. So how is it possible to do DPS without SP as destro? Or doesn't a Destro without Shadowpriest become as *weak* as affliction?

DPS is very unreliable as a meter, just measure total damage done and compare that.

Destrolocks do benefit from a shadow priest, but I'd reckon any other class would benefit more from it, except for maybe an enhancement shaman. Any other class is severely gimped without mana.

However, if a destro lock gets _no_ healing whatsoever, their dps takes a giant dive as they resort to bandage or drain life. I only had that on Naj'entus, when we were learning him. Usually it's not a problem, and as long as you're smart about when to LT it works fine. After all, a raid typically has 6-8 people in it that spec and gear themselves to be mana batteries with efficient heals. The occasional hot fuels your life taps comfortably.

For comparison, if I get a shadow priest that gives me 9k mana during a fight (by doing 200k damage), I gain about 3 SB's worth (5 lifetaps at 1800 mana each). Roughly 15k extra damage in total. Assuming I do 150% of what the SP does, you can estimate my damage at 300k, 315k with the 3 extra bolts. Roughly 5% increased DPS. This is in best case scenario, assuming Lifetap GCD as 100% wasted time.

So a shadow priest gives me 5% extra damage.
A shaman (non elemental) gives me 100 spellpower, which is also 5%.
Moonkin gives me 5% crit, also 5%.
Elemental Draenei shaman would increase it with 13%. (4% hit, 3% crit, 100 damage)

These are _rough_ estimates with a lot of assumptions being made. But I hope they give you an idea of what helps destrolocks and by how much.

Arelenda · 02/17/08, 9:23 AM

Originally Posted by ankido

I have a question for everyone. There's a debate going on in the guild about Immolation. Does immolation fit in a warlocks rotation as a 21-40 raiding spec? Someone in the guild did the math and came up with an outragous number showing that immolation does more damage then spamming shadow bolt. Can someone please help me out here and help end this debate with SB vs Immo. Are these two spells good to use together or is it best to ditch immo and spam SB?

I would recommend reading the warlock compendium, which is found somewhere on the EJ forum.

Krazen · 02/17/08, 1:53 PM

Originally Posted by Andeh-N

Whilst I rarely have to raid without a Shadow Priest in my group, on the occasion that I do it isn't really the end of the world. Just looking over some of our WWS reports, I get about 10k mana back on average for most Hyjal & BT fights, that's about 5-6 Life Taps for me personally, I'd imagine it isn't too far off of what it'd be for another Warlock too.

So if you figure that you have to LT 7 times extra in a fight without a Shadow Priest, which is about 10.5 seconds, though realistically it'd be safe to say about 12, due to lag. It doesn't cut into Destruction DPS so much so that it renders you useless.

TL;DR answer is 'Use pots (which you should anyway!)'

The spreadsheet shows that the 300 mp5 given by a spriest is about equal to 90 or so dps. It won't make or break your destrolocks.

Keep in mind that a spiest is far less useful on any fight with 'safe' movement or 'safe' downtime, such as Alar p1's movement, or Illidan's phase change.

Kyth · 02/17/08, 5:26 PM

It does, however, make it far safer for them to lifetap on AE-heavy fights in, e.g., T6, because they don't need to tap every 13 seconds and risk an AE at the same time. Council is downright boring when I have a spriest because I'm not close to dying multiple times in the fight unless I get unlucky on envenom + wrath or something silly.

Keep in mind, while it's "just" 90 dps, that's still a pretty solid increase, and is on par with many of the group-based buffs. Especially since we're the main class who can turn that mana regen directly into dps rather than simply into more longevity.

Also warlocks can consume the "full" regen from a spriest (i.e. none is wasted.) The only other class that can come close to claiming that (unless you're running with arcane mages or something) would be healers, if they can find people to heal pretty much constantly.

If you are willing to take the overhead, things like swapping groups around mid-fight to feed half a spriest to the other mana-using classes while keeping your destruction locks with one full time is actually a pretty good use for the spriest.

That said, you *can* raid as destruction without a spriest, particularly in the T4/T5 content, but definitely in T6 also, it's just a lot more exciting when you tap and immediately afterwards envenom lands

.

Kyth · 02/18/08, 5:51 AM

(paraphrased from my post at Profession choices for 2.4 - Fusion)

This isn't 100% rigorous, but it's an approximation: what kind of dps contribution can I expect to get from my second (non-leatherworking) profession given what we know about 2.4 already?

There's some more detailed information in the post above (including my specific stats), but the conclusion I came to was:

Enchanting: +24 dps (ring enchants)
Tailoring: +36 dps ([Sunfire Robe] versus [Robes of Ghostly Hatred])
JC: +38 dps ([Pendant of Sunfire] versus [Translucent Spellthread Necklace])

i.e.: not a helluva lot of difference. Good work on that, Blizzard

.

(this was all assuming you were at hitcap already, i.e. the worst-case for the +hit gear. The difference for JC is less if you actually need the +hit on the RoS neck to reach hitcap.)

(edit) I should probably clarify: since Leatherworking is giving you a good 80-100 RDPS per person with it, I'm not going to drop LW no matter what. It's more than worth its profession slot.

Roywyn · 02/18/08, 6:56 AM

Originally Posted by Kyth

This isn't 100% rigorous, but it's an approximation: what kind of dps contribution can I expect to get from my second (non-leatherworking) profession given what we know about 2.4 already?

There's some more detailed information in the post above (including my specific stats), but the conclusion I came to was:

Enchanting: +24 dps (ring enchants)
Tailoring: +36 dps ([Sunfire Robe] versus [Robes of Ghostly Hatred])
JC: +38 dps ([Pendant of Sunfire] versus [Translucent Spellthread Necklace])

i.e.: not a helluva lot of difference. Good work on that, Blizzard

.

(this was all assuming you were at hitcap already, i.e. the worst-case for the +hit gear. The difference for JC is less if you actually need the +hit on the RoS neck to reach hitcap.)

Hm, I did the same thing for mages, and got Ench (+24) > Tai (+21) > JC (+17), number are +spell damage equivalents. Although mages are not warlocks, there's are few things that I think could help you.

The difficult part is the stat weighting.

1 damage is 1 damage. 1 haste and 1 crit are worth whatever +damage the spreadsheet tells you.

The value of hit completely depends on the available gear and buffs.
From the things we've seen so far, it seems we won't cap hit from gear alone. I count ~9% hit from best-in-slot (head enchant, ZA+JC ring, Skull, Chronicle*), ~12% with the 50-hit-stick. Warlocks have another 1.5% more from one of the new T6 pieces. That means we'll have to gem to reach the hit cap.

So, our gems will feature 2 purples for the CSD meta, and a mix or yellow/orange/red gems with hit and damage to cap.
If we now get another +10 hit from one item, we cap swap one +10 hit gem for one +12 damage gem.
Thus, +1 spell hit should be valued as +1.2 damage for gear comparison.

With this in mind, every socket should be valued as +12 damage, and every item can get its socket bonus.
The top of the line gear doesn't have more than 2 blue sockets, so blue sockets aren't worse than others since you need 2 for the CSD.
And red/yellow/orange gems are all worth +12 damage as we weighted hit vs. dmg with that in mind.

With those weights, for mages it ends up as: Ench (+24) > Tai (+21) > JC (+17)
Note that the values of Tai/JC will drop if a proper (no spirit) Sunwell robe or necklace appear.

I'm quite surprised that 14crit+13haste (robe) are so much better for you than 24dmg (ring enchants).

Kyth · 02/18/08, 7:00 AM

I used Leulier's spreadsheet for the lock calculations which does what you're saying: gives weightings for each stat.

To answer your "how in the world..." question:

STAT                  DPS BONUS
+1 shadow dmg	1.02
+1 fire dmg	0.00
+1 dmg	1.02
+1 hit rating	0.00
+1 crit rating	1.07
+1 haste rating	1.27

For locks with no +hit talent, we're actually going to lean extremely heavily on the yellow sockets to put orange hit/dmg gems in them. Otherwise we can't reach the required 16%. But either way I'm not sure why you brought up sockets, as there's no real decisions to make in any of the pieces I was talking about. I'm pretty familiar with how to evaluate gear, I was posting what I'd come up with in case I was (a) wrong for destruction locks or (b) it could save someone else some effort, not because I needed help understanding gear stats

.

If you get a Grand Magister's Staff, of course, the hit considerations change, but every mage and warlock will want one, and if it follows the drop rate of Illidan staffs for us (3 in 6 months) I'm not going to design gear expecting it.

Now, the value of the stats change relative to the particular balance you have at any given moment. So technically, for example, my low haste gear (~7%) is not characteristic of end-of-sunwell gear (~18% probably), so this is, as I said, an approximation. What I haven't done yet is put the full new gearset into Leulier's, but I pointed that out at the start.

My main point really was not that JC > Tailor or whatever, but that they were all damn close and while I will generally spend any amount of money on a dps boost, at this point with so little information about what tradeskills I'll want in TBC, I'll stick with my current set (LW/Ench.)

There's been some angst around our guild, particularly from those who dropped tailoring to pick up leatherworking, and I was trying to show it wasn't warrented.

And, this may help you: keep in mind the tailoring robe also gets an additional +5 due to the socket colors being more favorable for the bonus if you have enough hit.

Bolche · 02/18/08, 8:15 AM

It would be nice to add the profession comparision to the compendium (and add LW : ~27 haste rating if drums are chained I beleave)

weet · 02/18/08, 8:25 AM

Originally Posted by Kyth

I will generally spend any amount of money on a dps boost

Well my plan is to keep Tailoring until I can craft the robe, then drop for JC to make neck and the 14dmg/12crit gems, and then to leatherworking (which I already had mats for but wanted to see what was in 2.4 first). Best of everything (Illidan helm > Engi t2) and gold is really meh especially with the expected inflation at 80.

Arelenda · 02/18/08, 8:39 AM

Originally Posted by Bolche

It would be nice to add the profession comparision to the compendium (and add LW : ~27 haste rating if drums are chained I beleave)

Good idea.

I'm going to wait with writing that until the patch goes live. Feel free to contribute yourself, though. I'll merge it in that case.

Eph · 02/18/08, 10:05 AM

Don't forget engineering, or am I wrong in thinking the t2 goggles are best in slot (from what's been discovered at least)? My current plan is to make the robe, drop tailoring, and pick up the goggles. I suppose JC or LW could be an even higher dps increase though.

edit: JC also has a +14dmg gem so that bumps it up just slightly as well.

• frmorrison · 02/18/08, 11:28 AM

Originally Posted by Eph

Don't forget engineering, or am I wrong in thinking the t2 goggles are best in slot

You are wrong, not having spell hit when most of the new gear is lacking in that hurts the damage/crit bonuses of Eng Helm. However, it is pretty competitive, just not best.

Eph · 02/18/08, 11:50 AM

Originally Posted by frmorrison

You are wrong, not having spell hit when most of the new gear is lacking in that hurts the damage/crit bonuses of Eng Helm. However, it is pretty competitive, just not best.

Ah, you're right I was thinking best in slot from 2.4. The [Cowl of the Illidari High Lord] is still better when considering the hit.