Arelenda

I doubt you'll need more than 1000g to level tailoring to 375 and get a full FSW kit. cloth tends to be cheapish, and at the high end there's plenty of tricks to reduce costs. 300->320 by making bolts, 325->340 by making imbued bolts, 345->355 by making bolts of soulcloth. The only expensive ones are the final ten points, and the primal fire & shadow for Shadoweave.

 

Silverstorm

I'll agree with the gear/playstyle/rotation comments and the majority of talent comments. There is a useful place for 2 of those points, and that's in Imp Drain Soul. More of your damage will come from affliction spells than shadowbolt, so the -10% threat there is valuable to some extent (depends on tank competence). Most likely that point in Amp Curse is useless, unless accompanied with CoEx (typically for Vashj strider kiting) or you actually get to CoA/CoD (not likely). The extra point could also go in shadowburn for lack of another place. It's saved me enough to warrant putting a point there. The single point in Imp Healthstone can also help with organizing all 3 healthstones in your raid, since a majority of builds seem to have 0 or 2 points there.

I would also posit hit > damage even for affliction. Nothing is worse to me than resisted dots that screw up the rotation. You lose the 1.5 seconds, then you lose Corruption uptime by waiting to resync with UA. I have not explicitly checked that with the spreadsheet (and it will overestimate DPS anyway).

Dependent on server prices, obviously. On A-N, Water is 15g, Fire is 25g, Shadow is 15g. 13*(15+25) + 38*15 assuming zero farming and perfect use of SC transmutes is still 1090g on my server. Throw in 2-3g per stack of cloth, and the price of soul essence + arcane dust, unless you have these store en masse...pure purchasing could easily top 2000g.

 

Elderx

With my gear and spec, is it better to use [Quagmirran's Eye] + [Icon of the Silver Crescent]
or [Icon of the Silver Crescent] + [Battlemaster's Audacity]
Armory link for gear The World of Warcraft Armory

 

Silverstorm

Use the spreadsheet; that's why it was created. It's linked in the first post.

 

Nicarras

The quicker answer than what the person above me posted would be this.

Your spell damage and crit are incredibly low for you to be attempting Destro. I even question your dest spec due to all your points in Fire talents, and no Soul Leech. You need to switch back to Affliction until you can get more crit/dmg gear and while you are Aff, use the Battlemaster's trinket.

I know its not set it stone, but at least attempt to get to 1000 dmg and 20% crit, you are nowhere even in the ballpark.

 

Deathwing

Actually, I think you'll find T4 is better in a few slots, specifically those not inhabited by spellstrike. For chest and shoulders, T4 is definitely better. Studious Wraps are better for gloves though.

 

LockApologist

Have you looked at your WWS for how useful Soul leech actually is? I went back over several months of mine and could not find a report where it was not 75+% over heal. 90% of the time, I tap and get 2-3 heals before my next bolt lands.

The 5 points that you have in Nether prot/Soul leech are just filler. Almost nothing of consequence procs nether prot in PvE, and Soul leech is just a waste.

Having 5/5 Emberstorm allows you to swap to Incinerate without a huge DPS loss if a fight or raid make up favor it (fire mages + no spriest + only 1 lock, for example).

 

Nicarras

Fair enough I suppose. Granted I pretty much always raid with 3 locks 2 SPs and 2 mages. I toss an incin maybe on Mother but thats only when She's Fire Vuln. Otherwise you are never casting a fire spell ever. I have looked at WWS and 2/3 Soul Leech heals about as much as Lifebloom does over a normal fight, or they are at least always very close. I wouldnt discount the healing from SL.

Nether Prot isnt a must have, but it sure is nice for Malacrass, Archimonde, Azgalor, Gorefiend, and I'm sure others that I'm leaving out right now.

Either way SL/NP is way more beneficial then talent points that boost fire spells, when you should never be casting them except in very rare cases.

 

galzohar

[quote=Silverstorm;680207]I'll agree with the gear/playstyle/rotation comments and the majority of talent comments. There is a useful place for 2 of those points, and that's in Imp Drain Soul. More of your damage will come from affliction spells than shadowbolt, so the -10% threat there is valuable to some extent (depends on tank competence). Most likely that point in Amp Curse is useless, unless accompanied with CoEx (typically for Vashj strider kiting) or you actually get to CoA/CoD (not likely). The extra point could also go in shadowburn for lack of another place. It's saved me enough to warrant putting a point there. The single point in Imp Healthstone can also help with organizing all 3 healthstones in your raid, since a majority of builds seem to have 0 or 2 points there.
QUOTE]

You're completely right for some reason I always forget to click those 2 points in improved drain soul - no matter how good your tank is it's definitely a better DPS gain than any other talent no matter how situational (think off-dotting). Amplify curse is nice for CoDing the off-dot target if not a lot of people are off-dotting it though. I find shadowburn less useful than the other options (1/3 improved imp or 1/2 intensity or CoEx). Going to try and edit the link to get threat reduction

 

Arelenda

I agree. Soul Leech and Nether protection, while far from key talents, are nice to have. I rarely use fire, with the occasional immolate on stuff where I can't risk a huge crit. I don't even bother with Shahraz's vulnerability since even when vulnerable I do more with SB. (usually no scorch)

I enjoy Soul Leech, and typically make sure I'm never at full health to maximize its efficiency. I enjoy Nether Protection as well, it's super against dispellable dots and procs off Archi's fear.

It's all details, though. Both NP&SL and Emberstorm/Immo are filler spells to me. Nice to have, but the key is S&F, Ruin and ISB. The rest is taste. This will probably change post 2.4. though. While ISB will still probably reign in raids, the difference will be much smaller between fire and shadow, boosting the effectiveness of fire talents.

 

Deathwing

I would count Soul Leach and Nether Protection as mostly filler, situationally usefull. Most of the time, Soul Leach is going to be overheal unless your healers are really slow.

Since 2.4 will make fire better than shadow for personal dps, I see a hybrid spec that takes Emberstorm and Improved Immolate(and Conflagrate for shits and giggles, though good for solo farming and burst fights) much better than pure shadow build that takes cataclysm, soul leach, and nether protection. Where a hybrid spec will be useful is on 10 and 5 mans. Quite a good chance you'll be grouped with no other shadow users, and most likely a mage, hopefully a fire one. In that case, it is much better to use Immolate and Incinerate over SB spam. Even if you get a frost mage, it is more beneficial to put up CoE for both of you because the fire rotation is just about even with sb spam when there are no extraneous fire or shadow buffs(CoE/CoS from yourself was included when I ran the specs in the spreadsheet).

 

taybul

Soul Leech is definitely useful when there's raid-wide (RoS) or AoE damage (Council) going around. It helps your healers more than you know when you can be somewhat self-sufficient via the passive healing. I find it particularly useful on fights with temporary heal buffs (again RoS, Bloodboil).

Nether prot is also a nice utility if you don't have to tank. I never appreciated this talent more than the time I got Barraged on Illidan and someone said that it was on a Pally.

 

Deathwing

I don't know, I've never found Soul Leech useful. The overheal on my fights(T4 and T5) are almost always over 70%. I also looked at WWS reports for Council, couldn't find a Shadowlock that had overheal percentage less than 70% on Soul Leech.

The other problem with both of these talents is that they are low chance. No ones going to change the way they play around Nether Protection or Soul Leech, so their impact will be very small.

 

Trickykid

The impact may be small but it's still a clear positive benefit. The same can't necessarily be said for the other filler talents.

70% overheal means 30% effective. That's still "free" healing that potentially saves healer mana, your life or DPS time you might have needed to waste on drain-life. There are plenty of fights with raid damage where you can use a heal but aren't at the top of the healers' list because others are more damaged. I'm glad to have an extra source of HP on any fight where tapping might push be below a safe HP level.

 

taybul

I think I'd be more concerned if that overheal% was much lower as it would suggest that your healers aren't topping you off much. Regardless, even if the proc rate is fairly low, it's still greater than 0.

 

Nicarras

Don't know, even with the Emberstorm change, in 25 man raids I cannot see how a shadow/fire mix destro build will out damage a shadow dest build. (outside of some odd group setup)

 

Deathwing

You're going to count 30%*20%*20%=1.2% on average of damage done as clear positive benefit? For 5 points of a 30-point prereq talent, that is a piss-poor investment. Might as well start debating the clear positive benefits of Cataclysm(which, btw, provides less than 1% dps improvement).

Also, I would bet that it's not even 1.2%. Since the health benefit comes in somewhat large, unpredictable chunks, it pushes the incoming heals from your healer even farther into their overheal territory. Very rare is the situation where healer is able to make a clear decision fast enough that you don't need a heal now because of a Soul Leech proc.

EDIT: Nicarras: Didn't say it would. A pure fire build definitely will. My case for a hybrid build(which is basically dumping soul leech, nether protection, and cataclysm for improved immolate, emberstorm, and conflagrate) is to make a much more versatile destro build while lowering your dps by less than 1%. In situations where there aren't any other shadow users or the only other caster is a fire mage(common in 10 and 5 mans), a hybrid build will definitely do more damage than shadow.

 

Cronjob

Conflag is a DPS loss no matter what...

We'll have to see how it all pans out but so far pure fire still wont out do pure shadow because of ISB. "IF" you dont calculate that into the equation then fire pulls ahead but so slight that its worth it in the long run. Fire needs to have an ISB equivalent in order to really make it on par with pure shadow.

 

Deathwing

Oh, I know about Conflag. For one point though, it's a useful soloing tool, and for burst situations. Where else are you going to stick that one point?

Have you played around with Leullier's spreadsheet? He's got the 2.4 changes in there, fire does more personal dps than shadow by a fair margin, 7% to 10%. Of course that doesn't take into account ISB from OTHER warlocks, which is why I only advocate using the fire rotation when there are no other shadow users in the raid. Otherwise, ISB is indeed much more beneficial.

 

Trickykid

Yes I would consider that a positive benefit? Given the amount of damage tossed out in t6 raids, some healing is better than no healing. I consider that a clear positive. Points sunk in emberstorm when I never use incinerate is zero gain. (Since you put it as an aside like it's not a gain, cataclysm also gives DPS and requires you to tap less which means your HP doesn't drop as often).

Maybe you're confused about what I'm saying. I'm not claiming it's the best talent, just that it has a positive return on your talent points while emberstorm doesn't in t6 raiding (where there will always be at least one SP). For me, I'll choose the free hp5, chance at immunity to raid damage and fewer life taps (which means safer raiding).

 

galzohar

The ISB uptime increase you cause greatly depends on the current number of shadow priests and destruction warlocks in the raid, so you have to check individually for every raid setup to really tell if fire is worth switching to. Not to mention the difference between fire and shadow's DPS also depends on the actual ISB uptime, so the less shadow priests your raid has the better shadow destruction is as ISB uptime will be higher, but then again your ISB contribution will be a little lower.

Bottom line is that fire VS shadow has a lot more to it than just "shadow has ISB". I suggest checking which spec adds more total raid DPS for your normal raid setup to know for sure what's worth speccing into.

For example with the raid setup I used on the spreadsheet with 2 dest 1 aff and 3 sp, switching to fire drops raid ISB by ~12% so 7% worth of personal DPS (delta ISB uptime multiplied by rest of raid's shadow dps divided by personal dps). That means if I'd gain 7% DPS by speccing fire it would be break even, less would be a DPS loss and more would be a DPS gain. This setup has 45.5% ISB uptime by the way. Just an example to show how much your raid setup can matter - if I would've set the shadow priests to do more DPS then it would be quite higher than 7%.

 

Krazen

Well, I wouldn't say quite that: There are 2 situations where I will use conflag.

1. In place of shadowburn as a mob is about to die.
2. On the move in a situation where I have full mana or don't want to lifetap.

My situation is probably rather rare. I have just about every offpiece in BT Hyjal that I want, and some that I don't really need, and I have only 2t6. But without 4t6, fire is comparatively a stronger build.

 

menx

My lock has been an arena toon for some time now. I've decided to bring him into raids, and as such my gear is mostly arena gear with bits and pieces from kara, gruuls, and za. I've pretty much socketed my way really close to the hit cap.

Given my current gear/stats, I'd like some recommendations as to what spec I should be focused on? I believe my crit is too low for destro, which is the spec i'd like to attain. thoughts? comments?

1035 shadow damage
196 hit rating
13.66 crit %

I was thinking bout something like this?
Talent Calculator - 31/9/21

 

• Suggestive

That spec sucks. Use the spreadsheet, and read the first post of the thread.

 

Cohren

Thats about the worst spec I have ever seen posted on these forums for raiding. Either go with a heavy affliction build or the standard 0/21/40 destruction.

As for the fire vs. shadow debate with ISB unchanged the numbers are way to close for a switch to fire as whats been said before, there is still more benefit to staying shadow.