You're probably thinking I'm crazy for considering this. You probably think our tanks should generate more threat and I agree. In the meantime, I'm not sure what other option I have other than spamming rank 1 spells trying to get crits for negative threat from my prism.
Yea, unless you're doing somthing like casting CoD instead of a debuff curse, imp w/ the 2pct5 would probably be the best way to dump more threat. Interesting that I hadn't thought of that before, thanks for the tip.
hydross
tidewalker
leotheras
voidreaver
solarian
kael
vashj
eagle boss timed ZA
bear boss timed ZA
lynx boss timed ZA
zul'jin
rage winterchill
hyjal trash - worth noting given our current progression
Fights where I don't have to hold back:
lurker
karathress
dragonhawk boss timed ZA
You're probably thinking I'm crazy for considering this. You probably think our tanks should generate more threat and I agree. In the meantime, I'm not sure what other option I have other than spamming rank 1 spells trying to get crits for negative threat from my prism.
Solarian, Vashj & bear boss are tauntable, if you are pulling aggro on those fights you need to find better tanks.
Hydross, Leo, Zuljin have aggro resets, if you are pulling aggro on those then its just bad timing on your part.
On fights like rage winterchill & tidewalker a couple of misdirects in addition to the time spent not dpsing (running out of death & decay, watery grave, aoeing murlocs) should give tanks enough of a head start.
On Tidewalker, Hydross & Hyjal trash we give the warlocks tranquil air in addition to salv so they can aoe earlier. If you raid with a good number of shaman this would be a good option.
Solarian, Vashj & bear boss are tauntable, if you are pulling aggro on those fights you need to find better tanks.
Hydross, Leo, Zuljin have aggro resets, if you are pulling aggro on those then its just bad timing on your part.
On fights like rage winterchill & tidewalker a couple of misdirects in addition to the time spent not dpsing (running out of death & decay, watery grave, aoeing murlocs) should give tanks enough of a head start.
On Tidewalker, Hydross & Hyjal trash we give the warlocks tranquil air in addition to salv so they can aoe earlier. If you raid with a good number of shaman this would be a good option.
1. We don't have the option of finding better tanks on our server. We're the most advanced raiding guild on our server and we downed Kael for the first time last night (talk about backwater..) I believe that our tanks are good.. they could probably be better but (aside from transferring) that's not an option.
2. Hydross, Leo, Zul'jin: yes, these bosses have aggro resets but you're mistaken if you believe that the aggro reset is the only time you can pull. I can get to the top of the threat chart after spending the first chunk of a phase seeding exclusively off of hydross herself. Phases 2, 4, and 5 of zul'jin I have to hold back considerably. Same with each leo phase. Pulling aggro at the beginning of a phase is not the issue (I understand how that _can_ be a problem, it's just not a problem for me).
The math, simplified:
destro warlock A generates X amount of damage which causes Y amount of threat.
imp-demo warlock B generates X amount of damage which causes Y * .80 amount of threat.
In any threat capped fight or phase, warlock B has the _potential_ to do up to 25% more damage than warlock A before pulling aggro. Phased fights _especially_ benefit from passive threat reductions because the soulshatter cooldown makes it so that you can rarely use soulshatter in more than 1 phase (out of 5 in the case of Zul'jin, for example).
3. I recognize that many of these fights involve movement but I'm telling you matter-of-fact: on these fights, in my guild with my players and my tanks, I end up threat-capped.. even if I have to run or tap or whatever. I recognize that many of these scenarios prevent other locks from reaching the threat ceiling, I just don't find that to be the case for me and my situation.
I don't see how you get improved imp without significantly gimping yourself. While shadow embrace, having an imp out and malediction are the only real reasons to even go affliction in the first place, improving that imp just costs too much - at best you will be losing range, anything else will be losing DPS.
To illustrate: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft the only talents you could argue are in the first 3 tiers of affliction, but you can only swap those to other talents within the first 3 tiers of affliction, which do not include improved imp. Anything from the 4th tier and above is pretty much a must-have for affliction raiding. 17 in destruction is also required for every warlock. Unless you want to give up range and/or dps you cannot put more than the 1 leftover point in improved imp, and even that may be better off in Intensity or maybe even CoEx. 3/3 improved imp is not possible with a viable build. The tank will live with 14 less stamina better than you managing with 2% less shadow damage to the raid if you take out malediction, 2% less damage reduction if you drop points from shadow embrace or if you lose range by dropping either of the range talents (range=survivability+dps).
Even if for some reason you have such insane gear (T6++) that malediction/ruin becomes a better build for DPS, then having to pick ruin means you're at the exact same position. In fact, you'll have 2 free points instead of 1, but will only have 2/5 contagion (3% less damage to corruption - remember to take that into account when comparing UA to ruin on the spreadsheet!).
Bottom line if you think an affliction warlock should have improved imp, you probably didn't look at the talent calculator carefully enough, or just don't care about anything other than 14 more stamina on the tank. Note that I say 14 becuase if you really want improved imp you can put your last point in there having 1/3 which already gives 7s tam out of the 21 you'd get from 3/3 improved imp.
My 0/21/40 spec gives me the following two options:
not threat capped: shadow destro with immolate = 1961 dps
threat capped: shadow destro with immo + prism = 1902 dps and 1605 tps
The 1/39/21 spec would give me the following two options:
not threat capped: 1/39/21 with succy and soul-link = 1957 dps
threat capped: 1/39/21 with imp and soul-link, no prism = 1824 dps and 1345 tps
The math, simplified:
destro warlock A generates X amount of damage which causes Y amount of threat.
imp-demo warlock B generates X amount of damage which causes Y * .80 amount of threat.
In any threat capped fight or phase, warlock B has the _potential_ to do up to 25% more damage than warlock A before pulling aggro. Phased fights _especially_ benefit from passive threat reductions because the soulshatter cooldown makes it so that you can rarely use soulshatter in more than 1 phase (out of 5 in the case of Zul'jin, for example).
Problem is if lock A does X damage then lock B will only do (X/1.10) - Z dmg
1. Being imp demo will result in a significant loss in damage from not having DS-Succi & SnF that the 20% passive threat reduction might become a moot point (except on probably VR).
2. Your numbers seem way off for the gear that you have.
If you are that worried about aggro try felguard spec. Its pretty competitive in all T5 content & early-mid T6 content.
Problem is if lock A does X damage then lock B will only do (X/1.10) - Z dmg
1. Being imp demo will result in a significant loss in damage from not having DS-Succi & SnF that the 20% passive threat reduction might become a moot point (except on probably VR).
2. Your numbers seem way off for the gear that you have.
If you are that worried about aggro try felguard spec. Its pretty competitive in all T5 content & early-mid T6 content.
1. Agreed. Go FG if you want to reduce threat. Splitting DPS w/ a pet is a huge threat reduction. Going for imp reduces your dps significantly.
2. I thought so as well. When I put her gear in 2.0 beta 4, and turned on all grp buffs (Elem totems, Moonkin, Spriest, Malediction CoS, casting CoD + SB only, chaining super manas, full consumables, etc), I get the numbers quoted. However, I'd be extremely surprised to see that performance actually achieved anywhere. I have very similar gear (more dmg, less crit), and I get 1.2-1.4k (actual. ~1.7-1.9 in xls) dps in that situation.
Which again points to a post I made in the spreadsheet thread, where I questioned why the xls so over-estimates real world performance at the high, buffed out the wazoo gear level.
Last edited by LockApologist : 02/28/08 at 6:07 PM.
Problem is if lock A does X damage then lock B will only do (X/1.10) - Z dmg
1. Being imp demo will result in a significant loss in damage from not having DS-Succi & SnF that the 20% passive threat reduction might become a moot point (except on probably VR).
2. Your numbers seem way off for the gear that you have.
If you are that worried about aggro try felguard spec. Its pretty competitive in all T5 content & early-mid T6 content.
There's no question that for a stand-and-cast fight with no threat ceiling, a destruction build will beat an imp-demo build. From the numbers I've generated on the spreadsheet, destruction is a 7.5% damage increase over the imp-demo build assuming I'm not using the prism of inner calm. If I have to use that trinket (which I presumably won't have to use with the imp) then that gap drops to 4% (that 4% figure comes from using quag's eye in my other trinket slot.. getting a VSH would further narrow that gap). I'd say that in the vast majority of fights I have to hold back by more than 4%. In situations where I don't have to hold back I can use the succubus for the extra 10% damage.
Felguard spec is a great spec and I've used it many times in the past. I have no doubt that it produces more damage and helps alleviate my threat problems. However, for progression content I just don't feel comfortable enough using it right now (especially since I don't have the VST and I only have 1-piece T5).
Anyway, you don't have to like my proposed spec. I was originally just asking about whether 2-piece T5 affected the phase-shifted imp.. and then felt the need to defend myself against the onslaught (all 2 replies =P) suggesting that there's no possible scenario under which that might be useful.
So Incinerate is looking like it's going to beat up Shadow Bolt on personal DPS. So assuming ISB doesn't change in 2.4, will it be more effective to have your Affliction lock be the only one applying ISB as the other locks wouldn't be eating up charges with Incinerate.
I'd love to know the same thing, as i near 70 with my lock i was sorta depressed about having to spam SB's eventually for maximum DPS when Fire is imo a bit more interesting. My only thought is that i hear Fire mages are harder to come by later on...where as Shadow priests are not(talking of course about their debuffs that effect our damage fire vs shadow)
I'd love to know the same thing, as i near 70 with my lock i was sorta depressed about having to spam SB's eventually for maximum DPS when Fire is imo a bit more interesting. My only thought is that i hear Fire mages are harder to come by later on...where as Shadow priests are not(talking of course about their debuffs that effect our damage fire vs shadow)
Ehh, it takes all kinds.
I will say this. If I wanted to be a fire nuke casting, 6k hp (fictional min/maxing to maximize output due to current lifetap stupidity) cloth caster, I would have made a mage.
I would really love to once again be a "dot everything up and live while those around me slowly rot or get eaten by my pet" class. But gear and talents.... you know the drill.
O well, at least I can still be a shadowmage.... And casting 2 spells the whole fight means more forum time, even on new content!
i was talking to lock in my guild and we talked about 2.4 damage and gear. so the big problem we were talking about is UA. yes we know that UA is not the best damage spec but it nice to up the raid damage and help the tank. so i think for a UA lock they should look for Haste and damage over other stuff. then destruction should look into damage and crit. the lock i was talking about this was saying no no the other way around witch i think is not good.
Long time reader, first time poster have a question regarding the dps spreadsheet
I personally use Leulier spreadsheet and love it, but a couple of my warlock friends, use maxdps.com and i was just curious what you guys think about maxdps. It seem to calc more dps then Leulier's does, so im not sure if it as good as the same.
Hey guys, I just had a few questions about this "new" incinerate. Now, I know the casting time has been reduced by 10% but I also heard that the spell dmg coefficient is going to be raised a bit too. Is this true?
Now, I know for now Incinerate and Shadowbolt are pretty much on par for eachother with personal DPS, but:
If Imp. Shadowbolt does indeed get nerfed to 15% with the charges only being able to be consumed by your own Shadowbolts, which one edges out the other?
My other question is should locks go incinerate if this happens? I mean, the high end mages I know of are predominately Arcane, so there isn't anyone to put scorch up. So maybe this Imp. Shadowbolt nerf does lower raid dps, but if no one is there to put scorch up, should we still go Incinerate?
I've heard nothing about a coefficient buff for incinerate. Decreasing the cast time will give a relative coefficient boost in the same way that bane does, but no word of anything other than that.
There's also no indication the ISB changes will go through. If it does go through a couple of things change. If you have a lot of shadowpriests, and high haste, your personal ISB uptime might go up instead of down. On the other hand, since it's only your personal DPS and not the raid that's affected any more, it's okay to go fire if that ends up being more damage overall.
Without that change, grab a spreadsheet that has raid ISB damage estimation. That way you can see if the higher personal dps is costing the raid or not. It might not if you have other shadow destro locks, and your shadow preists don't nuke.
Improved Scorch should be up, because your mages should be fire. Arcane died in 2.3(?).
My guild normally raids with 3 Warlocks (usually one of each spec) and 4-5 Melee DPS. (not including the 2-3 tanks.) The warlocks refuse to put up Curse of Recklessness up under any circumstances, claiming that the gain is too minor to be worth the additional damage risk to the tank and/or to be used instead of CoA/CoD. From what I can see with the numbers, this appears to be groundless. Are they correct, is CoR sub-optimal here, or are they just being stubborn?
(P.S. My guild is working on both Vashj and Kael ATM, everything else at that level is on farm, to give you an idea of the boss situations we'd use it for.)
Didn't see this answered yet, and its a pretty easy answer: your warlocks are wrong. CoR should always be used over a damage curse if it is safe to do so (and if you have a warrior keeping up Imp. Demo shout it is almost always safe). Not only will it help the melee DPS greatly, it will benefit the hunters (not sure if you were including them as melee) and also result in additional threat for the tanks. It is certainly not a minor gain, and on most fights it poses basically no additional risk to the tank. Actually, if you have 5/5 Imp. Demo up and the Screech debuff from a Hunter's owl it completely nullifies the attack power gained from CoR.
Just use your better judgement, on a lot of fights its impossible to keep the boss fully debuffed the whole time and it can still result in some nasty spike damage on occasion (IE Azgalor or Mother) - but 99% of the time it is going to be safe to keep it up.
I don't see how you get improved imp without significantly gimping yourself. While shadow embrace, having an imp out and malediction are the only real reasons to even go affliction in the first place, improving that imp just costs too much - at best you will be losing range, anything else will be losing DPS.
To illustrate: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft the only talents you could argue are in the first 3 tiers of affliction, but you can only swap those to other talents within the first 3 tiers of affliction, which do not include improved imp. Anything from the 4th tier and above is pretty much a must-have for affliction raiding. 17 in destruction is also required for every warlock. Unless you want to give up range and/or dps you cannot put more than the 1 leftover point in improved imp, and even that may be better off in Intensity or maybe even CoEx. 3/3 improved imp is not possible with a viable build. The tank will live with 14 less stamina better than you managing with 2% less shadow damage to the raid if you take out malediction, 2% less damage reduction if you drop points from shadow embrace or if you lose range by dropping either of the range talents (range=survivability+dps).
Even if for some reason you have such insane gear (T6++) that malediction/ruin becomes a better build for DPS, then having to pick ruin means you're at the exact same position. In fact, you'll have 2 free points instead of 1, but will only have 2/5 contagion (3% less damage to corruption - remember to take that into account when comparing UA to ruin on the spreadsheet!).
Bottom line if you think an affliction warlock should have improved imp, you probably didn't look at the talent calculator carefully enough, or just don't care about anything other than 14 more stamina on the tank. Note that I say 14 becuase if you really want improved imp you can put your last point in there having 1/3 which already gives 7s tam out of the 21 you'd get from 3/3 improved imp.
This is how I usually do a raid focused affliction build
I've yet to see any fights where more than 1/2 points in each of the ranged talents is all that crucial. Anything you'd want to avoid usually has a max range of around 30yrds.
It's sort of pointless to compare at 1k spell damage. Apparently SB does 967 dps. In raids I can do 2300 dps & have 1700 spell damage.
Really, Leulier's spreadsheet should be all you need. Though it's hard to input the effect of immolate, as keeping it up will be annoying and a drain on your overall dps.
I've yet to see any fights where more than 1/2 points in each of the ranged talents is all that crucial. Anything you'd want to avoid usually has a max range of around 30yrds.
Does anyone know whether or not Ruin > UA or not? I see a lot of raid DPS affliction builds going either way, and I would think that ruin would be better, but am unsure how to plug in the numbers into leulier or anything else.
Does anyone know whether or not Ruin > UA or not? I see a lot of raid DPS affliction builds going either way, and I would think that ruin would be better, but am unsure how to plug in the numbers into leulier or anything else.
1) Set all your gear, buffs, talents and spellcasts.
2) Check ruin dps by removing UA from casts and setting Ruin to 1. Note DPS somewhere.
3) Check UA dps by adding UA to casts and setting Ruin to 0. Note DPS somewhere.
4) Compare the two numbers.
Shadow Bolt has a 86% coefficent, 106% with SnF. Incinerate has a 71% coefficient, 91% with SnF.
So, it's still all wrong Try Leulier's spreadsheet.
As for UA vs. Ruin - UA is better at early gear levels, Ruin better at later gear levels. Reason being that Ruin scales better with at least crit, haste, hit.
Do what the above poster said. Making 2 copies of a sheet is a good idea as well, you can spec UA in one and Ruin in the second. Or compare gear choices.
Assuming 1200 shadow damage, 16% hit, 20% crit, UA is better than Ruin by a factor of 2.53% dps (1317 vs 1283) assuming full-duration on all dots and CoA.
Assuming 1500 shadow damage, 1300 fire damage, 16% hit, 20% crit, UA is better than Ruin by a factor of 2.25% dps (1532 vs 1497) assuming full-duration on all dots and CoA.
So it looks like for you affliction warlocks, no matter how well-geared, UA is the way to go over Ruin.
EDIT: Just to be complete, I changed the crit chance from 20% to 25%, and the respective percentages (instead of what they are above) were 1.01% and 0.78% in favor of UA.
Changing the crit percentage to 30% and assuming 16% hit and 1200 or 1500s/1300f damage, Ruin finally took the cake, but it would be difficult as affliction to gear this high into crit without the help of backlash and still maintaining 1500 shadow damage.
If someone could double-check my numbers, that would be good.
Assuming 1200 shadow damage, 16% hit, 20% crit, UA is better than Ruin by a factor of 2.53% dps (1317 vs 1283) assuming full-duration on all dots and CoA.
Assuming 1500 shadow damage, 1300 fire damage, 16% hit, 20% crit, UA is better than Ruin by a factor of 2.25% dps (1532 vs 1497) assuming full-duration on all dots and CoA.
So it looks like for you affliction warlocks, no matter how well-geared, UA is the way to go over Ruin.
w/o actually digging through the spreadsheet I have to say this cannot be accurate. I have no idea how your coming to that conclusion, but even 1000 shadow damage , 16% hit , 20% crit would blow away uA .
Obviously what makes Ruin so much better than uA is hit & if your hit capped it's almost a given that Ruin will overtake uA.
w/o actually digging through the spreadsheet I have to say this cannot be accurate. I have no idea how your coming to that conclusion, but even 1000 shadow damage , 16% hit , 20% crit would blow away uA .
Obviously what makes Ruin so much better than uA is hit & if your hit capped it's almost a given that Ruin will overtake uA.
Plugging the numbers you presented in the spreadsheet:
02/28/08, 4:04 PM
Try Leulier's spreadsheet.
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