jayowen

I found for Najentus that after turning off Soul Link the Felguard stayed up fine.

 

jayowen

I concur. I tried out Felguard and liked it, but I really don't like the fact that it's tied to a specific set bonus. If they could find a way to work it into the demo tree somewhere it would definitely make it a much more appealing spec.

 

Jaeydn

Now this is going to sound like a horribly noobish question, but as I have not been a soul link build since like over a year until now, I have no clue how to turn it off lol. I used to be able to click it off myself like any other buff, but now I've been saccing the pet and resummoning it to not have one soul linked.

 

Auranaras

Unfortunately that is the only way.

 

zarikdon

As a follow-up to the earlier discussion regarding the 4pc T5 bonus, has Blizzard commented at all whether it's a bug that it only affects base corruption damage right now, and not damage post +spell damage? I recently purchased the T5 helm for the 4pc bonus thinking that it would be a 50-ish DPS upgrade, but now it seems that the gloves off Attumen + Spellstrike Hood/Cowl of the Grand Engineer would be the better choice for a 0/21/40 build.

 

• frmorrison

4 T5 bonus isn't so great, and that is intended.

For destro, the bonus is mostly useless, and about a 20-30 dps increase for Affliction.

 

semi

Gloves off Attumen are nice, but if you want an upgrade for 0/21/40 look into Doomwalkers gloves. No points spent in stam/int so you might not want to use it in stam fights, but if you're trying to go pure dps they're worth grabbing.

I'm in a similar situation but keeping t4 helm+shoulders because with the set piece it seems at least equal to most gear upgrades I have available, but maybe I'm just lying to myself so I don't have to spend hundreds of gold on primals or ore for the engineering/tailoring helms.

 

Nas

I am leaning towards you lying to yourself. =P

In all seriousness though, I have no idea what your gear is like as I don't have a link to your Armory, but the Spellstrike set have served me well so far. I have the T5 pieces, I just find Spellstrike to be superior (Especially the helm) to T5, especially since I need it to cap hit without resorting to re-geming.

 

zarikdon

Our of curiosity, how are you getting that estimate for the DPS increase? No matter how I calculate it, it still ends up being around 5 DPS for affliction, before ISB.

The base gain for a corruption tick is 15 (900 base damage, 6 ticks, 10%), and to get the most out of the bonus you assume that all 5 ticks are affected by the buff from shadow bolt.

(1.5*(1+1.1+...+1.1^4))(1.1) = 91.6 damage over 18 seconds, which is roughly 5 DPS.

A 0/21/40 build would gain more due to the succubus sacrifice adding a 1.15 multiplier instead of 1.1 from shadow mastery as well as the fact that a 2 second cast time on corruption allows all 6 ticks to benefit from the set bonus, though of course you could argue that you wouldn't be trying to use the T5 bonus in that situation anyway, since an untalented corruption isn't good in your spell cycle. Yet even for that build, the DPS increase is at best 7 or so.

I just don't see how you could possibly squeeze out anything close to 20 DPS from 4pc T5 using any build.

 

Arelenda

Add CoS, Misery, Shadow Weaving, ISB. It still sucks, though.

 

Napoleond

Quick question, does Demonic Sac apply to your base Spell damage or to your Actual damage of the spell.

I.e. You have 1100 shadow damage, multiply that by 15% and thats what sac does.

OR:
Your shadowbolt hits for 3500, Multiply that by 15%.

My reason for this is that Shadow and Flame's tooltip is different then Demonic sac's, and was wondering if it was different.

 

zelman

Shadow and Flame adds 20% more of your +spell to those 2 spells, Demonic Sacrifice takes your outgoing damage and adds a multiplier. (so the latter)

 

galzohar

Yes shadow and flame is spcifically a coefficient change, meaning your spells get more out of spell damage. Instead of getting 3/3.5, you get 3/3.5+0.2. Demonic sac and other talents with such a description simply add a % to your final shadowbolt. How it stacks with other things that add +% damage is a different story though (I think it's talents and buffs add up, then the result is multiplied by the sum of debuffs on the target, aka base*(1+talent%+buff%)*(1+debuff%), but I'm very unsure about that).

Overall shadow and flame is like an increase in your spell damage, although in reality it's as effective as having (0.2+3/3.5)/(3/3.5)=1.2333 multiplier to your spell damage or 23.33% more spell damage when it comes to shadowbolt. then that spell damage adds up to the base shadowbolt damage (naked untalented shadowbolt) and then the result gets multiplied by all the multipliers.

 

Arelenda

How single target spells work:

Total damage = Base Damage + Spellpower * Spell Coefficient


Coefficient is generally casting time / 3.5.

- Coefficient is halved if it has a bonus effect like a life drain (death coil / siphon life / drain soul).
- Snares tend to have 95% of the original coefficient (frost bolt)
- Any spell below 1.5s casting time counts as 1.5. (Shadowburn, Death Coil)
- Dot coefficients are dot length / 15 instead, with damage divided equally per tic. Corruption, CoA and CoD are exceptions (0.94, 1.2 and 2, respectively, with emp corruption adding 0.12 per talent point)
- Cast time reducing talents don't count, it's original casting time. Frostbolt/Fireball are exceptions. But they're standard in 2.3.


Example: Shadow Bolt.

Base damage: 541-603 (according to wowwiki). For some reason my Base Shadow Bolt is listed in wow as 544-607, if anyone can enlighten me why, that'd be appreciated.

Coefficient: 3 / 3.5 (SB cast time is originally 3)

So a bolt would on average hit for: 572 + Spellpower * 0.86

Shadow and Flame adds to the Coefficient, so if you have it it's 572 + Spellpower * (0.86 + 0.2)


Generally, everything that adds to ALL Shadow damage (ISB, CoS, Misery, Shadow Weaving, Demonic Sacrifice) adds to the TOTAL damage, and all modifiers are indepently multiplied.

Example:
Corruption tics for 500.

Add ISB: 500 * 1,2
Add CoS: 500 * 1,2 * 1,1
Add Misery: 500 * 1,2 * 1,1 * 1,05
Add Demonic Sacrifice: 500 * 1,2 * 1,1 * 1,05 * 1,15
Add Shadow Weaving: 500 * 1,2 * 1,1 * 1,05 * 1,15 * 1,1


Notable exceptions to the "boost total damage":
- Amplify curse will only boost base damage
- T5 4p set bonus boost dots weirdly (it modifies the base damage of the dot, and stacks).
- Shadow Mastery doesn't boost CoD.

(updated to correct mistakes)

Warlock Aoe:
Rain of Fire: 8/7 of spellpower to total, divided per tic
Hellfire: 15/7 of spellpower to total, divided per tic
SoC Dot: 3/2 of spellpower (but blows up at fixed amount, which is not affected by power)
SoC Detonation: 1/6 of spellpower

Rain of Fire and Hellfire seem consistent since their contribution per second is 1/7.

 

galzohar

Secondary effects afaik are 95% coefficient, however spells like life drain don't fall in this category - they fall in the category of "spells that also heal you" and therefore receieve 1/2 the bonus.
Also I think spells that are faster than 1.5s also count as 1.5s, not just instants (example paladin's hammer of wrath).

As for debuffs I'd verify first if they actually multiply like that rather than add up. It would actually make more sense if a targte with ISB, misery, shadow weaving and 13% CoS would have 20+5+10+13=48% increased damage or 1.48X, not 1.2*1.05*1.1*1.13=1.57X. Shouldn't be too hard to test on Dr. Boom with a couple friends though.

 

Bobkelso

speaking of Felguard DPS...

Wow Web Stats - 1914 DPS

It's really beneficial on Tidewalker, because while you are busy AOEing, he's hacking away at the boss still without having to "renew" him like a DoT.

I use Felguard spec for pretty much everything in SSC/TK now, and I'm never really beaten on the damage meters. (except fights where I have to do something specifically that lowers my DPS)

 

Arelenda

Right on both counts. Correcting.


I tested this when writing ShadowSeer. I'm 100% sure most multipliers .. well.. multiply. I didn't test with each and every combination, but all the ones I could stack multiplied.

 

Soul

CoD and Drain Soul have half the gain from spellpower that you would expect (CoD only gets a 200% bonus from damage, Drain Soul gets 7.5/3.5 instead of 15/3.5).

Drain Mana (along with mana burn) is completely unaffected by spellpower.

Finally, AoEs don't seem to exhibit any consistent behaviour with Spellpower. Here are the coefficients I've seen:

RoF: 8/7
Hellfire: 10/7
Blizzard: 8/7
Hurricane: 9/7
Arcane Explosion 1.5/7
Cone of Cold, BW, DB: 1.5/7 * 0.9
FN: Less than 5%.
Flamestrike DoT: 8/45
Flamestrike DD: 3/10.5
Consecration: 8/10.5

Obviously , there are no longer any standard rules for AoE coefficients. Total damage is generally capped at 10 times the average damage per AoE excluding crits, with the exception of the Flamestrike DoT, so at a certain number of mobs, the spell coefficient becomes moot except that you cap out sooner.

 

galzohar

You're saying the "10 target cap" isn't based on the actual damage per 1 target but rather the "naked" damage against 1 target? Unless you tested it out I find it very wierd, although I didn't test anything about it myself.

Anyway the AOE spells do *seem* to follow certain rules, it's just that each spell has different attributes that make it follow different rules. For example (assuming your coefficients are corret):
RoF/blizzard - 1/3.5 per second like all spells, 1/2 for being AOE, and then X8 for being over 8 seconds.
IAE - like a 1.5s cast spell but 1/2 because it's aoe
And I suppose you could explain at least some of the rest if you only knew what factors apply there, although it is definitely possible some have an "irregular" coefficient (like CoD or drain soul have).

Anyway I remember reading somewhere AOE was 1/3 and not 1/2, but oh well...

 

tornblack

Does anyone have a model they like for calculating improved shadowbolt uptime that they like? I'm aware of shadowseer for measuring what is going on in the current raid, but i'm more interested in a theoretical model for comparing various raid makeups.

For example, consider a tank and spank encounter w/ 3 shadowpriests and 2 warlocks, what is the impact on overall dps for:

2 0/21/40 locks spamming shadowbolt nonstop

vs

1 0/21/40 lock sbolt spamming and one 42/0/17 + 2 refreshing dots and spamming shadow bolt in between.

Obviously I could just measure the same fight over and over again with both makeups using wws and shadowseer, but duplicating otherwise identical raid conditions over and over again is nigh impossible.

 

Katinsha

*is proud of the fellow Argent Dawnian warlock*

Minor thingies:

It is Curse of Shadow and Curse of the Elements.

Also, being an Affliction warlock myself, I find the bit about hit rating in the corresponding section maybe a bit too short. You could perhaps extend it a bit with discussing when to choose hit and when straight damage? Also please discuss the alternatives for Suppression, once you have more high-end gear, but still want to be Affliction.

Popular idea here is that you are Affliction until you get better gear from Tier 6 instances. As if it is a spec you can and will "outgrow". This is not true for some players (myself included), since the utility and self-sufficiency of Affliction retain their strength even when you personally do not scale as well as other specs with the abundant hit/crit/haste gear. Personal DPS and higher ISB contribution are not always decisive factors in some people's choices. It can be that you just find it more FUN to not spam one spell all the time. Or they want to be able to DPS multiple targets efficiently. It can also just be the fact every raid with a lot of shadow/arcane casters loves one Affliction lock for Malediction.

Players that like the spec and wish to keep it even when raiding tier 6 instances might want to know how the different stats should be valued with their spec in mind even if it is not optimal (it is often "nuke gear") but still (perhaps) the best they can get.

The way you put it (hit>spell dam>rest) is as I said, in my opinion, too short and might give the wrong idea to Affliction locks planning their gear progression.

Nevertheless, great effort and kudo's. And that mod is awesome, although I won't use it personally since the info it gives will probably be: get more spell damage! D'oh! *grins*

 

Arelenda

Considering the game mechanics are nowhere near what you'd expect them to be, theorethical models of ISB don't seem very useful.

ShadowSeer measures and does educated guesses, it's nowhere near reliable for data extensive data mining. For example: Spells cast on a mob when ISB is up will hit for 20% more damage, regardless of what happens during flight time. ShadowSeer does not model this, for example. It only counts until the debuff is removed, it doesn't take into account what spells are flying at that point.

 

galzohar

Also remember that the only spec that doesn't lose DPS by giving an imp to the MT is an affliction spec...

Regarding hit for affliction:
By putting some reasonable stats in lieuler's spreadsheet it gives me that 1 hit rating is almost as good as 1 spell damage, while we know on itemization 4-5 damage = 4 hit rating, which makes hit rating actually not all that great. Considering this is a best case scenario for hit rating (minimum hit rating to cap DoT hit and 100% of DPS time being on a "boss"), hit rating for affliction actually results in *less* of a DPS increase per use of itemization point than spell damage, and thus would socket all red sockets with 9 damage gems, and only put 5 damage 4 hit gems in yellow sockets on items with a any useful socket bonus (crit is still inferior to both).
Remember that if you have higher than minimum hit for affliction spells and/or don't DPS bosses 100% of the time (taking bosses with adds into account), hit gets even worse for affliction.
Regarding suppression, the gains from dropping points there are extremely minimal, as to reach nightfall and emp corruption you need 15 in the lower tier talents, 5 of which going into corruption, 2 in lifetap, but the other 8 can only go in suppression, amplify curse, soul siphon, fel concetration, imp CoA, imp CoW or Improved drain soul. Since the only talents of those that increase DPS (amp curse, suppression and soul siphon) can already be taken with those 8 points, I don't see a reason to get any hit beyond the minimum 6% if you can help it, as your DPS would not increase through talent changes. To put any extra points in demonology you will have to take points out of destruction or higher-tier affliction talents, which doesn't change when you aquire more hit gear.

 

Arelenda

fixed, thanks.


The compendium is a joint effort built by combining and pruning debates and discussions in this thread and the warlock thread. If you feel that an area is underrepresented, feel free to add your own extension here and I'll merge it.

The example builds are guidelines, to be used as illustration, really. I've tried to highlight the key talents, and left the non-vital choices out. One reason for that was to avoid debate about whether unimportant skill A was better than unimportant skill B. But also because plenty of warlock builds are viable and require a lot of wiggle room.


My personal opinion is that raids are optimal with one affliction warlock, and others in demo/destro. I also think that allowing people to spec according to the playstyle they like makes your raiders happiest, and one could argue that that is most important in a game.

But the scope of the compendium is to detail builds that work best. Playstyle is mentioned, but is not considered vital.


Well, it gives a rough outline, at the end there is a detailed section below explaining why the outline is rough, and there's links to tools to determine how stats work for you. I'll add to the guide that it is, in fact, a rough sketch.

 

Soul

Yes, that is what I'm saying. It's one of the more screwed up things about AoE capping... only the BASE damage of the AoE counts (at least, that's the way it was when it was introduced).

Well, that's the point... with so many varying coefficients and custom rules, you can't even guess at the spell coefficient until you test it out and post it a little table. For example, given what I posted above, what's the coefficient for SoC or Shadowfury?

It used to be that all AoEs followed the rule of (cast time)/3.5 * 1/3 with the 90% modifier being applied to BW, CoC and Hurricane for their 50% secondary effects and cast time being capped out at 3.5 (which was why Hellfire and RoF used to scale so horribly). When Naxx was introduced, spells were allowed to have cast time modifiers greater than 3.5. After the mass AoE/power leveling that happened during the Scourge invasion, some of the AoE spells got capped and some of them got the AoE modifiers raised. But they weren't consistent, since FS got capped and did not get the coefficient raised, while Blizzard got the coefficient raised, and was not capped until 2.2.