PSGarak

At 2.0 it was a horribly inconsistent mess, but 2.2 seems to have gone through and fixed a lot of the AoEs that got left behind. There might be a consistent rule now, and 50% penalty + 10-cap sounds like it is true for standard AoEs with no secondary effects. Consecration and Hellfire seem to have been hit with a 1/3 penalty rather than 1/2... and they're both PBAoE DoTs? I dunno. How recent are all those coefficient data?

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Arelenda

The aoe coefficients listed in my post were double checked today. After some testing with multiple gear sets, I was at most 2 points off.

 

Soul

I checked Hellfire, RoF, Bliz, FS DoT, CoC, and AE just before I made my post. The druids over on the WoW forums checked Hurricane about a month ago... I multiplied their results by seven and found that the multiplier was really 9/7... 90% of cast time divided by seven due to the attack speed penalty. Consecration is a pretty well-known number by all the prot pallies on the board. Consecration actually has a relatively high (and unusual) modifier when you consider that it's a AoE DoT

Just rechecked Hellfire again with my level 65 warlock. Maybe the rules change at level 68, but at 65, there's no way that Hellfire gets a 15/7 multiplier. With 484 bonus damage, I was getting ticks of 261. The tooltip says 215. A difference of 46 per tick, so spellpower adds 46 * 15 = 690 damage to the spell. Multiplier is thus ~690/484 = 1.42. Multiply that by 7 and you get 10 (well, 9.98), not 15.

 

semi

Sorry about the armory link, forgot to update when xferring. Should work now, if not: The World of Warcraft Armory

Yeah..after looking at the gear a little more I think you're right, although its still hard to say [Spellstrike Helm] vs [Destruction Holo-gogs]
I'm guessing spellstrike would be better if i went for the legs as well (instead of the trial fire trousers with 3 +9s), but thats a huge investment in mats for gear that presumably should get replaced anyways.
Also destruction hologogs means meta gem which would mean I could try out that new crit meta.

 

Krazen

What is a good baseline DPS for warlocks looking to join a tier 5 guild?

I just went on my first raid on my character. As I've posted on another thread, I'm looking to get back into raiding, and the general consensus there seems to be to skip the Karazhan stage.

I don't have tailored epics or anything quite yet, so this is still a work in progress, but I managed 630 dps on my first Maulgar kill.

I'll try to update this post with a WWS, but I think I botched the combatlog feature, so that will have to wait.

The World of Warcraft Armory

Here is my armory, its obviously a work in progress.


One thing I did have trouble with is maintaining dot rotations on 2 mobs. On a single target I will curse of shadows, and I'll try to place curse of doom on the 2nd mob, and maybe siphon. But I found that if I try to maintain UA/Corr/Immo on the 2nd mob, I lose some uptime on the first.

 

Arelenda

Do you have Emberstorm?

According to wowwiki base damage is 208, not 216. So that suggest you have 4 points in it. Or wowwiki is outdated. Either way, our data is inconsistent. I'll do some research into this. My tooltip info has been off, as well. I'm not sure what's causing that.

Update: Wowwiki's data is correct. 208 is the base damage (check by walking to IF with a level 1 Warlock)

Update: Shadow Bolt base damage is 541-603. My tooltip says 543-607. I removed all my gear, and have a screenshot of me hitting Boom (no buffs, no gear) for 605. I have no clue why this is.

 

Arelenda

Your gear is horribly subpar for end game raiding. I'm not sure what a tier 5 guild is, if it means "they have some tier 5" that just means they killed Void Reaver which means nothing, really. If it means "they all are decked out in t5" then you're not going to fit in. I recommend picking up tailoring for FSW and Spellstrike or farming Karazhan. Or both.

As for rotations, on trash I'd start with UA on the main target then spam Agony and Corruption on tanked targets. On boss fights with adds where you can dot freely, just use all your dots on all suitable targets. As long as a dot runs its full duration (not pushed off, target won't die, you don't refresh it too soon) they are highest damage-per-casting-time (dpcs) for an affliction warlock. Refresh the best ones first when they run out, use remaining time to apply the inferior dots, and if everything is dotted nicely, use Shadow Bolts.

Of course, if success hinges on one target dying really fast, you might want to just dot+SB a single one. But in general, the strategy above will result in highest dps.

ShadowSeer will tell you whether you're losing tics on any dot, and how much dpcs each one is, if you're not clear on that front.

 

Nas

That's true, spellstrike will eventually be replaced. I only recently replaced my Spellstrike leggings, and wouldn't replace the helm till T6. As for the goggles, they definitely are quite nice - however, for destruction before the hit cap I'd still lean towards spellstrike hood being better individually. Trying the new crit meta would be nice though!

All in all I found investing into Spellstrike well worth while.

 

Soul

208 is the damage at level 54 when you buy the spell, but the spell's base dps slowly goes up as you level, like any other spell. Anyway, my warlock is a UA warlock with 13 points in Demo (she does a lot of grinding and testing), and so has no modifiers to any Destro spells.

As for the discrepancy, I bet it's a bug. Do a test on your 70 warlock with Rank 3 Hellfire and find out what the coefficient is (it should still get the full coefficient). I bet you our results will match then and we'll have a bug report to submit to Blizzard...

 

Arelenda

That is the first time I've ever heard about that. Base damage being increased per level, for all spells?

My Corruption was learned at 65. Yet it still has 900 base damage, which is the amount it does when first learned. Hellfire was learned at 68, base damage 306. Mine is listed as 312-313 which is exactly what it should be if you calculate my one point in Emberstorm. However, rank 3 of Hellfire and my Shadowbolts are off.

It's definitely not the case for ALL spells, but it looks like Shadow Bolt did get an increase. Can anyone enlighten me?




Data from hellfire experimenting:

I'm 70. I have one point in emberstorm (2% bonus damage)

with 982 firepower:

Hellfire rank 4 - 457 damage per tic
Hellfire rank 3 - 362.5 damage per tic

with 467 firepower

Hellfire rank 4 - 382 damage per tic
Hellfire rank 3 - 287 damage per tic


On the tooltips:
Rank 4: 313-314 dps (learned at 68: base 306)
Rank 3: 219-220 dps (learned at 54: base 208)


--

analysis for rank 4 at 70 for me:
damage per tic = 457
damage per tic without spellpower = 313.5 (between 313 and 314)

damage per tic without emberstorm = 457/1.02 = 448.04
damage per tic without emberstorm without spellpower = 313.5 / 1.02 = 307.35

bonus from spellpower per tic = 448.04 - 307.35 = 140.7
my spellpower: 982

so spell coefficient = 140.7/982 is about 1/7.

So my Hellfire gets 1/7th of your spelldamage per tic, 15/7 on the whole.

---

analysis for both ranks and both spellpowers gives me the same result: 1/7 of spellpower per tic.

 

Soul

OK, I figured out what my mistake was. I foolishly figured that the the damage you did would equal the damage inflicted on yourself. Turns out that is not the case, Hellfire has a 15/7 coefficient when damaging mobs, but a 10/7 coefficient for self-inflicted damage.

Mea culpa.

As for spells increasing with level, it's just there for most spells. The only way to accurately see the base power of a spell is to look at the tooltip on a character with no talents spent. This is because Blizzard only updates some of the tooltips to reflect the effect that talents have on base damage (for example, Drain Life and Life Tap tooltips are not affected by talents). Anyway, given that there are now new ranks of most abilities obtained within two levels of 70, it doesn't make a big difference.

 

garegga

ive been reading these forums for a while, trying to raise my game by researching what the clever people do etc..

however, i feel the need to actually post, as i seem to have trapped myself into a cycle of inefficiency which is almost worse than being mocked as the warlock who isnt at the top of DPS meters...

firstly, if this isnt appropriate, just delete, but i did see other help type posts in here..

ok, now ive been a lock and nothing else for a few years now, and things really have changed since the MC days..

i understand that i need to cap the To Hit which i have been trying to do with gems and the proper enches.

now, i seem to be underpowered in comparison to other locks who have less gear than i do, which is really confusing.

my cycle in raids is (Curse)UA,Corr,SL,SB,DP,SB,SB,SB,DP (reapply)

or close to that effect. sometimes throwing in Immo or CoD as and when situ calls for them.

that is on single target as ive been told off for DoT spamming even tanked targets for aggro purposes.

obviously on trash i wont be that effective, but i see people with higher output who shouldnt be out doing me..

The World of Warcraft Armory

is it an inefficiency in my set up? - is it on trash i should be dong better? is my cycle not correct?

i put a lot of effort into being a serious player who can be relied upon to play well, but i seem to not be getting quite what i want out of this setup.

many thanks for any help, cheers.

 

tdurden

Does someone have a good reasoning/math model about the Shadow Embrace talent?

I'm talking about it's main function, not as an added affliction debuff obviously.

Everything deeper than "it's all wasted with overhealing" would be nice

 

Vazu

Wow.

Paragraph - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Arelenda

Some tips:
- It looks like you have a LOT of +hit. 5 points in suppression, and then some more on your gear. A lot of that is wasted.

- Immolate is probably worth it for you. Use ShadowSeer to find out, or Leulier's spreadsheet.

- Use dots on multiple mobs whenever you can. If someone is tanking them (and not tanking anything else) they ought to be able to keep up with the threat easily.

- Make sure your dots are up as much as possible (without refreshing stuff that's not run its course yet). Make sure to have an addon that tracks it. Link a WWS if possible, that'll give us some info to work with.

 

garegga

thank you arelenda,

the reason i am stacking Hit, is i have read that i must hit the 202 cap in order to ensure my spells stick.. now to be fair, i didnt read anything about the 202 in conjunction with suppression but as an affli lock, having sup is almost a given, surely.

in kara, i did notice the amount of resists i was getting before i focussed on Hit, and now with the amount i have got (which is considerably less than 202) i get few resists. So, i should stop stacking and focus on +DMG purely on the other slots?

In regards to the cycle - once i dot up the main target, dotting offtanked targets takes up the time i would have spent SBing the main target so that by the time reapply comes around i probly would only have time for 1 SB. Then of course the 2nd offtanked target needs reapplying as well.

is that how its done? it seems awkward, however i understand raiding isnt meant to be easy, i just like to know if im doing things in the correct way.

 

Heathcliff

I would move 2 points of supporession into 2 points of improved life tap.

You wouldn't give up 30 spell damage for 5 spell hit, would you? Naturally if you had a piece with 25 spell crit, you wouldn't give that up for a piece with 3 more spell damage, right? Every stat has relative values. The spreadsheet at <http://www.leulier.com/> will give you a good starting point for figuring out what these are for your build. For affliction, 1 point of spell damage is going to be worth about 0.7 point of spell hit. Had you not had suppression to max out dots, this would be about 1.2.

In regards to your DOT cycles on two targets... that's okay that you only have time for 1 SB. Think of SBs as fillers in between refreshing dots. You're going to do more DPS and more DPM by applying dots. However, if you have two targets, and your raid leader wants one dead ASAP, ignore the other one and SB the first. You might do 160% your normal damage by splitting your DPS, but your tanks are taking 200% the damage. Minimizing raid wipes always comes before maximizing personal DPS.

 

Trickykid

For maximizing damage, you should only cast SB if you can't cast any other spell that by the end of its duration has higher damage-per-cast-time than SB. Only Life tap when you would SB otherwise. In fact, if you have so many targets that you're losing uptime on the first mob, then you can drop a lower DPCT dot. If you have enough targets that you could keep busy casting JUST your highest DPCT dot, your DPS should be killer.

You don't need points in suppression if your gear has enough hit on it. Look at the spreadsheet with your gear, but if I recall correctly stacking pure shadow damage has pretty nasty returns.

 

Arveene

As an affliction warlock your DoTs should be your highest DpCT. On trash (assuming you don't have to burn down the current target as fast as possible) you should put up DoTs on the main target and then start DoTing up other mobs that are being tanked as well. This will give you the most damage. Even with suppression, you'll eventually want to get more hit from your gear to drop it. The biggest piece advise I (and most others so far) can give you is to put in your stats into leulier's spreadsheet and find your relative values to compare different gear / gem choices.

Edit: I would also work on that grammar thing before you receive another infraction for it =(

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....54348qrUOc.png

 

garegga

Ok, thanks all i got really good advice there. I have Shadowseer now and will be doing an upper Kara run shortly. Hopefully ill be able to put it all into practice with good results and ill post the results.

Thanks again it was highly appreciated

edit: in the raid last night i came 2nd or 1st depending on whether you include a couple of goes on illhoof after prince.. It seems Immo wasnt really doing much, so i dropped using it and used SB instead. Thank you again

 

Pentamorfi

Recently I started levelling a(nother) warlock and noticed that the damage I was doing would go up slightly with every level (same rank of spells, of course). Something like 1 more damage per tick, slightly more damage with shadowbolt etc. Now I didn't keep any data of this, nor am I any good with math, so this is mostly anecdotal evidence. But it should be easily reproduced and tested by someone who's good with this stuff.

 

Lanik

I've tinkered a bit with another spec, which - at least for me - has proven to be quite useful in a raiding enviroment. The link and details are below.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

This is a hybrid build that's crossed my mind while I was playing a SM/Ruin build and it seemed like an improvement, since for higher levels of spelldmg, the heavy-SB reliant dps increases more then just 5%, since SM's 10% dmg is added to initial shadowbolt dmg, while the succ DS debuff adds 15% after spelldmg coefficient calculations (final dmg). I decided to give it a try, since our RL allowed it, and while I can't say I've always been top dps, most of the times when I was free to do a dmg curse I ended up quite high on the dmg meters (being slightly undergeared in comparison to the others in my raid).
The utility of such a build is that it has both Demonic Sacrifice and Ruin, and outputs high-ish shadowbolts (not as high as 0/21/40 or 0/40/21, but still pretty good), as well as instant corruption, improved life tap and the occasional Nightfall proc.

I'd also like to add that I haven't done the maths to verify this against a SM/Ruin spec, but from the trade-offs (losing Blood Pact, Siphon Life, Contagion, Dark Pact -possibly biggest downside of all 3-, while gaining Demonic Aegis, Fel Stamina and Intellect, Demonic Embrace and ofc extra shadow damage from Demonic Sacrifice) it seems worth it in terms of personal dps. This is not a must-have build, but it's an option for those who like high SBs (and improved ISB uptime), as well as instant Corruption and improved CoA.

 

Palahniuk

What I fail to see is how such a build would be an improvement over 0/21/40. I should have to think that the gains in crit from backlash, as well as the 20% extra spell damage applied to your shadow bolts from shadow & flame, would vastly outweigh any potential dps gains from nightfall and instant corruption. Recall that nightfall merely reduces the cast time of a shadow bolt from 2.5 talented to 1.5 seconds to account for the GCD. While I do feel that nightfall is surely a must-have for any affliction-based build, I don't think it's enough to take in lieu of the deeper destro talents.



As far as non-cookie cutter hybrid builds go, I've given some thought to pursuing a 30/21/10 build. I ran a Leulier on it with my current gear setup, and unless I'm mistaken its damage output is nearly identical to the current 0/21/40 build I run. As far as possible pros and cons of such a build...

Advantages:
- Imp LT and SL allow me the ability to rely significantly less on healers to maintain my damage output.
- The mobility afforded by instant corr, SL, and nightfall is invaluable in later content.
- I still get to take advantage of the half-cast meta.
- I get to take advantage of the 4pc T5 set bonus, which is completely inconceivable with 0/21/40. Alternatively, 2pc T6 would do nicely with this build as well.
- 35% bonus shadow damage ensures that the build would scale VERY well with gear.

Disadvantages:
- Debuff slots, debuff slots, debuff slots.
- Lacks the raid utility afforded by SE, Malediction, or the ability to keep ISB up as much as possible afforded by a heavy destro build.

Possible variants/restrictions:
- It's very possible to take 4/5 SE with this build if your guild doesn't have a SE lock already. My current one does.
- Requires that one be hit-capped or nearly hit-capped from gear (but I think that any serious end-game lock should be hit-capped anyway, personally).

Has anyone had any practical experience with BT/Hyjal raiding with such a build, or a variation thereof? Perhaps it's a ridiculous idea, but I'd be curious to hear others' thoughts on it.

 

Arelenda

This build was already analysed and beaten into the ground, on multiple occasions.

http://elitistjerks.com/506250-post2109.html is one.


In short, you gain imp LT, a better Corruption, and Siphon Life. You lose 8% crit on Shadowbolt, and your Shadowbolts will hit for less than 0/21/40. Given that this spec relies on Shadow Bolt more than anything for its dps output, the results are obvious. Your spell cycle would be Corruption every 18 seconds, Siphon Life every 30 seconds, and every other spell would be Shadow Bolt.

If your healers are unable to compensate for the occasional lifetap a Destruction Warlock needs, then I suggest ditching the 30/21/10 Warlock and getting a healer instead.

 

Eph

Just a few pages back. Start on post #78.