Someone asked this already, someone answered this already. Please look before posting. Short answer: it depends.

In my 25-mans, we have 2 -3 locks most of the time. I am Aff/Ruin, the others are both Desto. One consistently uses CoS, and I haven't run enough with the other to determine what she uses, but I wonder what I should be casting. I gain SIGNIFICANT dps from Agony (imp agony and contagion) and before you say get rid of imp agony, where else to put those points? Yeah.

Is there a certain threshold where I should switch to Elements/Recklessness? I have read through and it seems to be debated, and the only example on the first page is Doom vs. Rec which helps me none. Would it be even better to be the one that casts shadow and get Malediction and make the Desto lock get the other?

I want to assist the raid, but it is hard enough keeping DPS up with hunters without losing my best DPS spell.

Thanks guys.

You have malediction and you cast CoA? You really should be on CoS/E if you're that deep in affliction. The other locks should look at various forms of damage going out in raids. If 10% of the frost/fire DPS is greater than the DPS of CoD, then they should include that.

3 locks and a standard raid set-up? If so then all 3 major debuff curses should be used. CoR is not only extra damage for Melee/Hunters (+ pets) - it's also extra threat for the tanks.

Agony will be a short-term gain for you, long-term loss for the raid.

As Tricky has also noted - If someone has Malediction then it should be a clear case of that person on CoS (as long as your using a standard raid set-up i.e. a couple of Spriests & 3 x Warlocks).

Your utility curse *is* your dps. There's no competition to look good on meters while diminishing your actual contribution. No one tells a shaman, "you're not doing enough personal dps, stop dropping windfury totem," and it should be the same with warlock dps.

As far as the thresholds:

Shadows increases shadow/arcane damage and mana returned by shadow priests by 10-13%
Elements increases fire/frost damage by 10-13%
Recklessness increases physical damage by 5-6% and threat cap by some smaller amount
Agony/Doom increases personal dps by 100-200 (depending on gear/encounter)

Rank these according to what adds the most to raid dps for your particular raid.

no need to be a smart ass. the question is probably buried deep in a thread with a different title under different names.

and yes i did look through all the thread titles in the last 4 pages.

It's in this thread multiple times. People are likely to have come up with most questions you could come up with. It's worth verifying it's at least not in the thread in which you're asking.

He is not being a smart ass about it... If you had read through you would have seen it, trying looking for posts around the date that the change was announced on the PTR, you'll find lots of data and tests that were done on PTR and on spreadsheets.

Thanks for the responses. This helps chose between the curses (we have 2 always, sometimes 3 locks).

As for UA vs. Ruin, I thought that Ruin scales better as per this thread (first page). Has this been reversed? Looking through, it seems like there is a LOT of disagreement here.

Thanks again for all the help.

It depends on your gear, fill out the spread sheet with what you are wearing and try different specs. For me ruin started topping UA when I had a bit of BT/HY gear.

It's also impossible to determine a breakpoint in gear as even if you assume hit capped, the more spell damage you have the more crit you will need for ruin to surpass UA. So as your gear goes up the minimum crit required goes up as well, but the crit required doesn't go up as fast as your actual crit chance so you will eventually reach it. Also having the 4/5 T6 bonus drops the crit requirement for ruin to top UA noticeably.

At the end remember that if in a stand and shoot fight you play the same as the spreadsheet is assuming (regarding dot-gap, delay between casts, etc), and it tells you UA and ruin builds are equal, in practice UA will be a little better due to multi-dotting and losing less DPS to movement (as you cast DoTs while standing still for 8.33% of the time while those dots do a LOT more than 8.33% of your DPS). With enough movement the crit requirement for ruin to beat UA goes up, especially if it's a lot of movement that you can choose when to do, but also if it's random there's a very high chance you will have to move in between UAs - worst case would be having to move right before needing to refresh UA you'd lose the same relative DPS as ruin would lose. Any other case would favor UA.

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Does anyone know the change to spirit increased our pet's mana regen as well? I have been trying to get on the ptr to see for myself but one of the patches kept corrupting it.

As far as I know, pet mana regen is currently independent of your stats. It will be affected by the new spirit changes, so pet mana regen is likely to change a bit. And since it's Int score is boosted by yours, that will affect it.

I have to admit that I'm at a loss to find a scenario where gear based boosts to pet mana OO5SR mana regen would actually matter.

Actually the one thing I wanted to test was if having a higher than average int value, possibly through the fel intellect talent, would be able to give higher than intended mana regen values to help out affliction warlocks to dark pact more often. It might help while leveling(as if it wasn't easy enough to level as a warlock), but you are right, there really are not many places where taking advantage of this would be beneficial.

I remember reading a post on the wow forums about the imp having 80 odd additional mp5 due to the spirit change. With BoK, BoW, sporeling snacks, arcane intellect buffs I'm sure there'll be a notable increase in the imp's regen. I do not see it affecting affliction dps though.

Edit: Found a couple of anecdotal posts in this thread. Wish we had more numbers.

I think this is due to how the spreadsheet works.
If you enable Dark Pact it first drains the pet empty, then Lifetaps onwards. So if you disable Dark Pact, it "merely" replaced the existant Dark Pacts with Lifetaps, enabling Dark Pact doesn't mean you use 0 Lifetaps.

And that's the gain:
The more of your manaregen is from DP (not LT), the less healing you need. THe more the healers love you

(edit)
Erm, for clarification: Yeah, there is no DPS gain. There is a HNPS (healing needed per second) loss though

They really should change dark pact regardless. Perhaps make it a reverse soul link; 20% of the mana cost of your spells is drained from your pet instead.

It's already the best grinding talent in the game, and in raids it completely erases one of the two disadvantages to our sole longevity tool. Not everything has to give a strict ideal-brick-wall raid-DPS increase to be a worthwhile talent. Having to damage myself is an acceptable part of the class; being able to damage myself less is a welcome benefit.

For grinding as affliction just go to legion hold (center area with the fast respawning warlocks) with a healer - you'll need him to loot mobs for you (ffa loot) more than you'll need him to heal you, but you will definitely consume mana way faster than your pet regenerates. I suppose using only UA and corruption (and a SL added on the few higher HP mobs around there) for spells helps the mana/sec usage go way up though

I use Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft for farming legion hold warlocks. Siphon Life -> Curse of Agony -> Corruption and the mob will die. Sacrificed VW, Shadow Ward whenever it is up, Siphon Life ticks, and Death Coil will be enough to sustain your mana output and the damage you will take, with no downtime at all. Any shadow resist you can get is also godly.

There are a few useless talents in that build but it's mostly to get to the important things. With this spec and the three DoT method of farming I can do 80-100 marks an hour along with whatever cloth, greens, and armaments I get. I'm sure there are people that could do much better then me aswell.

Just using a simple SL/SL build for Legion Hold, Siphon->Corr->CoA with SLed Succu on defensive. 2T5 + 2T6 and some Drain Souls from time to time make for 0 downtime. Only 1 problem, needs a looter for effectiveness since the mobs seem to have a very fast despawn time.
Managed to keep about 2/3 of the place cleared when I wanted to drive other people farming away but normally, solo, it's slower since you have to loot all the long line of corpses in time.