Fizwidget

Loop is BoE, the JC neck is BoP. If you can get enough sunmotes, you can get the ring without having to spec JC.

Engineering for the helm, or enchanting for 24 dmg is the best bang for your tradeskill-slot buck. (after tailoring, of course)

[Annihilator Holo-Gogs]

I'm partial to engineering, its cheap and you get to wear goggles. On the other hand, if you can D/E, you never have to worry about finding a D/E'r for your 5-mans.

EDIT:Fixed iLink

Dauntless: "Incapable of being intimidated or discouraged; fearless"

 

Spoonman

Leatherworking is better, no? [Drums of Battle] is an effective 20 personal haste, but also 20 haste for the other four members of your group. [Sunfire Robe] has 14 crit and 13 haste over the [Robes of Ghostly Hatred], drums are a clear winner (assuming you are in a group with at least one other dps).

 

Vlar

Another couple benefits over engineering:

You do not use any equipment slots for the 24 damage basicallly making it "free"

Also, while you may upgrade the helm before the expac (not an engineer, so I do not know how powerful the helms are), you won't upgrade the ring enchants as you will be able to toss it on any upgrade you get.

Thirdly, it is REALLY nice being able to enchant your own stuff, God knows how often I have gotten annoyed that I could put the Mongoose or Executioner enchant on someone, but I have to bother someone else to get it for my warrior.

 

Zaq

So I was curious what other people were planning with regards to keeping their 4T6 bonuses. I'd assume that everyone is taking the [Boots of the Malefic] and[Bracers of the Malefic] and nearly everyone is taking the [Belt of the Malefic] as well. Obviously your profession choices may dictate these somewhat, but I thought it might be interesting to see what old t6 item people considered most viable.

What then, are people considering for the following tradeoffs:

Gloves:
[Gloves of the Malefic]][Sunfire Handwraps]
Chest
[Robe of the Malefic][Robes of Ghostly Hatred][Sunfire Robe]
Shoulders:
[Mantle of the Malefic][Amice of the Convoker]
Legs:
[Leggings of the Malefic][Leggings of Calamity][Pantaloons of Growing Strife]
Helm:
[Hood of the Malefic][Cowl of the Illidari High Lord][Annihilator Holo-Gogs]

"I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions. I'm just, like, inviting you to join me on the bandwagon of my own uncertainty." -Taylor Mali

 

Krazen

The spreadsheet is your friend? But the Helm is the clear answer.

 

rochan

So far, it seems like it would be "optimal" to change Enchanting to Leatherworking after you get both Mana Attuned Band & Loop of Forged Power. Unless there is an uber ring from Kil Jaeden, there is nothing better than these 2 rings. The other profession of course being Tailoring for the chest.

 

dakalro

Try Illidan head + t6 shoulders ( + all else you can get from Sunwell) vs t6 head + Amice. And there's also some ilvl 164 head dropping in Sunwell if I'm not mistaken (hopefully I'm not).
Most of the bonus comes from needing to fill 2 blue gems which you can get socket bonuses for in Illidan head and t6 shoulders.

 

Bandoer

The Tailoring Robe can drop on the way to Kalecgos, so that raises the value of tailoring since most of us would be upgrading T6 chest to Sunfire Robe. Regarding optimizing professions for progression, it's somewhat off to be considering a M'uru or Kil'Jaeden drop. JC is a similar scenario if you don't have Translucent Spellthread Necklace, as the next good neck drops of Eredar Twins, which may be a rare drop.

Kil'Jaeden loot is pretty much inconsequential because at that point you've beat the game and any further BC gear is just for dressing up.

 

Zaq

Right, I'm fully capable of running the spreadsheet for my stuff, but which old t6 to keep is probably the most compelling gearing choice for SP. Dakarlo also already made a suggestion somewhat different from yours, so I don't see it as a wasted discussion.

"I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions. I'm just, like, inviting you to join me on the bandwagon of my own uncertainty." -Taylor Mali

 

weet

Well for professions, tailoring will give you the biggest item upgrade early. But from a guild perspective, my guild has over 8 dps casters who are all tailors. Whereas the JC neck probably no-one can actually use at the moment, and it gives roughly half the dps upgrade that the robe does. Yet later on the robes off of M'uru will be the equivalent to sunfire (he drops same ilvl robes - not referring to the healer hand-in version seen on vendor) and the neck off of Twins is still worse than the JC one + has hit (a disadvantage for overall gearing options).

So if you are looking at ranking them with rough numbers it would go:

Pre-Muru/Twins loot options
- Leatherworking (75)
- Tailoring (50ish)
- Jewelcrafting/Enchanting (both around 25)

Then with all loot
- Leatherworking (75)
- Enchanting (25)
- Jewelcrafting (15)
- Tailoring (0-? - depends on stats of drop robe)

I am very loathe to drop enchanting for WOTLK, + the fact that there has been a boss drop healer and physical dps ring, means there should be a caster one somewhere.

So optimally one would have either tailoring or jc + enchanting then drop enchanting for LW, but really as long as you have two professions which actually contribute it is not horrible.

As it stands currently with the t6 pieces, the helm + offset shoulders is superior because illidan helm + t6 shoulders has way too much hit assuming you have the best items pre-sunwell. But then again KJ should drop a higher ilvl helm with no hit.

It is debatable whether it is 'useless' to talk about KJ item drops because, unless sunwell takes under 3 months to clear you should not expect to have all of the 3 new pieces assuming even distribution among your fellow raiders, let alone the offset pieces. All this talk about ideal pre-kj items don't really come into play until you will have the zone on farm anyway, so considering ideal gear up to a certain point is somewhat of a stupid idea, just take whatever drops that is an upgrade and once everything is on farm it is the time to work out an ideal set. Personally I already have the illidan helm so from a guild perspective it is better for me to use that + t6 shoulders until KJ helm, while letting others pick up the shoulders off of twins.

 

• Suggestive

I've found the shoulders + illidari helm to be a better combination than using the malefic helm. I'm guessing this is because i assume i'm running without a elemental shaman, and the hit on that combo was something in the region of 30 more. Either way its a 1 DPS difference, and the optimal setup depends on your raid/group. Combined with the fact that we still haven't seen everything that drops in the sunwell, i wouldn't make any absolute statements on the best gear combination.
What chest drops off Muru?

 

galzohar

Proffessions seem to be all about speculating what blizzard will bring next. I mean for now leatherworking is just extremely powerful I doubt any proffession can beat it, however it's not safe to speculate that it'll stay like that in the long run (WotLK and beyond). You can almost safely assume blizzard will always give tailoring and jewelcrafting something nice for casters, and to a lesser degree engineering (I was actually disappointed although the epic goggles are kind of a rescue but far from enough - but you can never know). Leatherworking may or may not have something equivalent to drums - you can only feel safe to assume that it'll always have stuff for leather wearers but gambling WotLK will bring something equivalent to drums is just that - a gamble.

Bottom line is in the long run proffessions are a guessing game, and in that game I would play guessing tailoring/jewelcrafting or tailoring/enchanting. For right now leatherworking seem to be pretty hard to beat (I hadn't run the numbers but 80 haste rating for 4-5 people with 25% uptime (effectively 80-100 haste rating), even if it costs a global cooldown, is just a lot).

 

Krazen

There is, but it had loads of spirit. [Helm of Arcane Purity]

Cowl + t6 shoulders nets you:
78 stam
53 int
42 hit
60 crit
110 damage
1 red 1 yellow 1 blue skt

Convoker + t6 helm nets you:
91 stam
64 int
16 hit
54 crit
30 haste
116 damage
1 red 2 yellow skt

Given that 1 haste can be traded for 1 hit through gemming, the t6 helm combination has more dps stats, as well as more stam/int.

The fact that there's a blue socket is moot. You're going to use either [Forceful Seaspray Emerald] or [Glowing Shadowsong Amethyst] to fulfill your meta requirements, and you can throw those in yellow/red sockets. All the t6 shoulder combo does is force you to use your 2 blues in those 2 items; with all red and yellow sockets, you can put them anywhere.

I do apologize, though, its close than I thought it would be, and I was unnecessarily snide.

 

weet

In all likelyhood KJ will drop a 'proper' caster dps helm, just as m'uru will drop robes which are not the ones with spirit.

The only reason we know of the healer helm off of KJ is because it is able to be turned into the vendor for the 'healer dps' version, so it shows up on the vendor. Just like when the PTR first came out, people were speculating that the only shoulders were the hand-in ones as well as the legs before brut and twins were killed and they dropped Leggings of Calamity/Amice of the Convoker.

Quoting my old post!

 

anton

I thank you all for your replies about raid grouping. I will look over it and consider a course of action.

As to the one troll that reposted my exact post on my guild's forums, I hope you forever burn in a sea of warlock Hell fire. That was completely not needed.

 

Lord Pendragon

A quick question for the masters,

My affliction lock's current routine is to apply Unstable Affliction, Curse of Agony, Corruption, Drain Life, and Immolate, then begin spamming shadow bolts until the DoTs need to be reapplied.

However, I've noticed my dps lagging in relation to a couple of demonology/destro locks I often raid with on this character. My gear (The World of Warcraft Armory) is on-par with theirs, so I'm wondering if perhaps my spell routine is sub-optimal.

Thoughts?

 

Zephro

There is no spell rotation as such for affliction warlocks, because your dots' durations are too varied. Just try to avoid having more than one dot running out at a time.

Anyway, the reason you're falling behind is that Affliction scales horribly with gear due to its overwhelming focus on just one damage stat (spellpower). Destro and demonology benefit greatly from crit and haste, neither of which do much for you. It doesn't matter how well you play, a destro-spec warlock is always going to do more damage simply because he gets more out of his gear upgrades. If you want to be competitive on damage meters, you'll have to respec (although Affliction can be useful as a raid-support spec if you take 5/5 shadow embrace and 3/3 malediction).

 

Carra

As has been said, at a cerain level destruction begins to outscale affliction by a large margin. I respecced to destruction last week and saw my dps increase from around 700 a 800 to 1000 a 1100 dps using the same gear.

One advice would be to cast corruption after UA. They both have the same cooldown making them easier to cast together. And if two targets are tanked, put dots on the second one too. Your dots will do more damage then using shadowbolts.

 

dakalro

Considering that so far every boss dropped 1 extra item over set tokens and will maybe drop a max of 2 randomly, that spriests want amice and afaik spirit leggings are better for them I think I'll try to ninja Illidan helm (wonder how many went for offspec so far ) and dump all my dkp in the first part of the instance on leggings, tailoring chest and T6 since the 2nd half only gives a minor neck upgrade, a hat, the dagger and maybe a trinket(?!) and cloak(?!). With a 164 head it should be a better combo just hoping it won't undo a lot of stuff where hit is concerned.

On another hand I totally forgot about the useless gems becoming sort of semi not so useless. I'll have to redo sheet once I get home but afaik the difference was minor with my weirdo gemming amethysts in T6 (oops) with T6 helm + Amice.

 

Krazen

Quite possibly. Given the similarity betweeen [Chain Links of the Tumultuous Storm] and [Leggings of Calamity], I suppose we can expect something close to [Cowl of Gul'dan] and [Garments of Crashing Shores] if something exists at all.

Keep in mind though that Elemental Shamans don't have a BoP crafted chestpiece.

 

galzohar

A WWS is more useful than an armory link, as an armory link will not show how much you're messing up your DoT refreshing and how much time you waste simply doing nothing. There have already been countless people saying their DPS doesn't match up, and the answer had always been that first they should actually try harder to dps, as they can do a lot more with that same gear if they just attack more (you'd think that's obviuos... but that's actually the #1 reason people have low dps), and 2nd (less important) is that they can fix a lot of things in their gear and spec quite easily.

You're affliction, you should never cast curse of agony on the main target in raids. And if you're off-dotting most likely some shadow priests are as well so you shouldn't CoA the off-target either. CoS (with malediction) on anything that has shadow casters attacking it - let the other warlocks cover curse of elements and curse of recklessness (which means if you have 3 or less warlocks NO warlock should be using a damage curse anyway). The DPS increase of malediction is better than any dps increase you could possibly get by using a DPS curse over another warlock who puts up CoS for you.

You are definitely not anywhere near the gear level where destruction outDPSs affliction. You are, however, most likely at the skill level where the ease of playing destruction outDPSs affliction. It doesn't mean you should be destruction unless you completely give up on learning to play...

You can easily upgrade your spell damage massively by getting frozen shadoweave and spellstrike and gem with 9 damage gems exclusively (your wand too!). Get S3 mage bracers. Replace the horseman's ring with the one from cenarion expedition exalted. Get the badge reward gloves. While you should use spellstrike, if you do use a meta gem use the 1/2 cast meta for affliction (which can be activated if you just socket everything with red except 1 purple gem). Farm a darkmoon card crusade and ditch that quag's eye.

Your spec fails by not providing the raid with shadow embrace, no imporved lifetap, no malediction, no +5% crit on shadowbolts and no +range -threat on shadowbolts. You don't need the lifedrain and curse of agony talents and you really don't need demonic embrace and really really don't need fel intelect. Consider Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft with the last point going in either CoEx, improved imp or intensity, all nice to have but not at all nescessary. Since hit caps at 16%, you can drop a point from suppression for every wated 2% hit (aka 1 point if you have 18% hit (8% from gear), 2 points if you have 20% (10% from gear) etc) - although there isn't really anywhere useful to put those points so that change won't increase your dps, however it is definitely better than having >=18% +hit as anything above 16% doesn't do anything.

Remember damage>=hit>haste>crit for affliction, with damage and hit being far above the other 2. For exact values consult with the spreadsheet.

 

Jaeydn

On talk of professions I've not noticed anything definitive on the new Sorc Stone since it was changed from hit to damage. Any thoughts on how good it would be to take alchemy now over tailoring?

 

Eph

When comparing best in slot items wouldn't the Alch trinket have to be better than the Skull of Gul'dan assuming M'uru or KJ drop a nice caster trinket? So essentially it would be 8dmg and 40mp5 vs 25hit and 29 haste.

Though this does bring it back to the argument that best in slot doesn't matter if you include items from a cleared SWP (much less since you wouldn't be chain potting as much.)

But lets just compare the second best trinket for now:

[Sorcerer's Alchemist Stone](40mp5) over [Hex Shrunken Head](25dmg) vs [Sunfire Robe](6dmg, 8haste, 14crit) over [Robes of Ghostly Hatred](3stm, 6int, 32spirit)

To find the exact dps differences we'll have to pull out the spreadsheet, but I'm going to guess that Tailoring is going to stay ahead.

 

Lord Pendragon

Thanks very much for the advice guys, especially Galzohar. Really appreciate the time it took for that in-depth reply. Looks like I've got some work ahead of me, both in terms of gear and playstyle.

One last follow-up question. You've suggested getting Spellstrike and arena gloves. I take it then that the warlock T4 set bonuses don't impress you?

 

Morwen

The T4 bonuses are not bad, each of them is worth roughly 20-30 spell damage, but Frozen Shadoweave and Spellstrike individually beat the T4 pieces by such a margin that the bonuses don't make up for the difference, even more so after you factor in Spellstrike's own bonus proc. On the other hand you are not currently a tailor and you might not be in a guild that really values min-maxing, so you'll have to weigh the value of spending the several thousand gold to powerlevel tailoring and make those items for a noticeable but not deal-breaking dps increase. The gloves that were suggested are the badge gloves [Studious Wraps] rather than pvp ones, though the ones from Attumen/Magtheridon are fine alternatives if they happen to drop for you.