PsyBomb

I linked the post earlier in the thread about ISB no longer affecting DoTs. It was stated by a blue, the tooltip will be updated in the near future to reflect how it now functions.

To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.

 

Nailo

Btw about professions.. Anyone already tested the new Tailoring Embroidery to see it worth against the +46 Enchants (Inscrip, Lw and Enchanting)? Trying to lvl up my professions now, I think i will stay being Jewelcrafter ( i know its worse than a +46 enchant but its not a total loss, last time i checked it was +60 spell power, -30 spirit). Some questions i still have about the embroidery:

1) Does it grow up with Spell Power?
2) Can it crit?
3) Does it still have that 45s Internal cd?

 

Kambing

Some datapoints I collected tonight for my guild locks with a whole bunch of spec and rotation combinations.

===

My results on the level 70 dummy for various specs and configurations. Only fel armor up and no clicks so I could focus on a good damage rotation with each spec. Also, to simplify things I only threw up CoE. For affliction, I speced out of malediction (contrary to the listed spec) in order to keep things apples to apples.

The only difference between fire and shadow and spell power for me was soulfrost (+54 shadow).

Affliction (Unstable Affliction, Haunt, Siphon Life, Corruption, Shadow Bolt*):
Overall: 4:22 min trial, 525407 damage (1711.9 dps), Felhunter = 6% of overall damage.

• Shadow bolt, 89 hits/19.1% crit, 239612 damage, 48.7% overall
• Corruption, 100 ticks, 96653 damage, 19.6% overall
• Unstable Affliction, 91 ticks, 77302 damage, 15.7% overall
• Siphon Life, 95 ticks, 42584 damage, 8.7% overall
• Haunt, 22 hits, 36023 damage, 7.3% overall

Affliction (Unstable Affliction, Haunt, Siphon Life, Corruption, Drain Life*): Too low to be worthwhile (~1000 dps).

Fire Destruction (Corruption, Immolate, (Chaos Bolt | Incinerate | Conflagrate)*):
Overall: ~2:30 min trial (OOMed), 306379 damage (1643.1 dps), Imp = 9% of overall damage.

• Incinerate, 52 hits/34.6% crit, 170844 damage, 61.1% overall
• Chaos Bolt, 11 hits/9.1% crit, 32044 damage, 11.5% overall
• Corruption, 56 ticks, 23382 damage, 8.4% overall
• Immolate (DoT), 46 ticks, 19352 damage, 6.9% overall
• Conflagrate, 9 hits/6.1% crit, 16916 damage, 6.1% overall
• Immolate, 11 hits/36.4% crit, 16884 damage, 6.0% overall

Fire Destruction (Immolate, (Chaos Bolt | Incinerate | Conflagrate)*)
Overall: ~2:45 min trial (OOMed), 315468 damage (1557.9 dps), Imp = 10% of overall damage.

• Incinerate, 65 hits/24.6% crit, 191612 damage, 67.2% overall
• Chaos Bolt, 12 hits/25.0% crit, 38718 damage, 13.6% overall
• Conflagrate, 12 hits/16.7% crit, 20548 damage, 7.2% overall
• Immolate (DoT), 47 ticks, 19124 damage, 6.7% overall
• Immolate, 12 hits/16.7% crit, 15003 damage, 5.3% overall

Fire Destruction (Immolate, Corruption, (Chaos Bolt | Incinerate)*)
Overall: ~3.29 min trial (OOMed), 431918 damage (1672.2 dps), Imp = 8% of overall damage.

• Incinerate, 77 hits/32.5% crit, 252673 damage, 63.9% overall
• Chaos Bolt, 15 hits/20.0% crit, 47945 damage, 21.1% overall
• Corruption, 78 ticks, 35907 damage, 9.1% overall
• Immolate (DoT), 77 ticks, 32758 damage, 8.3% overall
• Immolate, 16 hits/43.8% crit, 26111 damage, 6.6% overall

Fire Destruction (Immolate, (Chaos Bolt | Incinerate)*)
Overall: ~3.00 min trial (OOMed), 345370 damage (1611.0 dps), Imp = 9% of overall damage.

• Incinerate, 73 hits/27.4% crit, 219890 damage, 63.9% overall
• Chaos Bolt, 14 hits/35.7% crit, 49292 damage, 15.7% overall
• Immolate (DoT), 64 ticks, 26049 damage, 8.3% overall
• Immolate, 14 hits/28.6% crit, 19433 damage, 6.2% overall

Hybrid Destruction (Corruption, Immolate, Chaos Bolt*, (Incinerate if Molten Core procs | Shadow Bolt otherwise)*):
Overall: ~3.09 min trial (OOMed), 361791 damage (1518.5 dps), Imp = 9% of overall damage.

• Shadow Bolt, 73 hits/18.4% crit, 114409 damage, 34.7% overall
• Incinerate, 26 hits/38.5% crit, 93120 damage, 28.3% overall
• Chaos Bolt, 13 hits/23.1% crit, 44054 damage, 13.4% overall
• Corruption, 73 ticks, 33590 damage, 10.2% overall
• Immolate (DoT), 69 ticks, 29275 damage, 8.9% overall
• Immolate, 14 hits/21.4% crit, 14860 damage, 4.5% overall

Deep Shadow Destruction (Corruption, Shadow Bolt*)
Overall: ~3.30 min trial (OOMed), 399355 damage (1558.7 dps), Imp = 9% of overall damage.

• Shadow Bolt, 81 hits/29.6% crit, 279081 damage, 76.6% overall
• Chaos Bolt, 16 hits/13.2% crit, 47912 damage, 13.2% overall
• Corruption, 81 ticks, 37273 damage, 10.2% overall

Shadow Sacrifice Destruction (Shadow Bolt*)
Overall: ~2.00 min trial (OOMed), 245041 damage (1449.3 dps)

• Shadow Bolt, 67 hits/23.9% crit, 245041 damage, 100.0% overall

Shadow Sacrifice Destruction (Corruption, Shadow Bolt*)
Overall: ~2.23 min trial (OOMed), 295913 damage (1598.1 dps)

• Shadow Bolt, 66 hits/34.8% crit, 268762 damage, 90.8% overall
• Corruption, 58 ticks, 27151, 9.2% overall

Felguard Demonology/Bane (Corruption, Shadow Bolt*): Too low to be worthwhile (~1300 dps)

Random thoughts about the runs:

• Given Soulfrost on my weapon, the winning specs are Deep Affliction and Fire Destruction with Corruption+Immolate+Incinerate.
• Everlasting affliction makes affliction much more bearable but still requires a bit of good play in order to maximize dot up time.
• For all destruction builds, Chaos Bolt is the second highest DPS spell. It stands to reason that because of this, all the destruction builds performed similarly because the benefit gained by adding spells to your rotation is minimized by the increasing difficulty in hitting Chaos Bolt on cooldown.
• Conflagrate does not perform as well as I'd like. This is because conflagging clips immolate/incinerate combos leading to less overall DPS.
• It also turns out that hitting the conflagrates was the hardest thing to keep up amongst all the specs and rotations. The mindshare dedicated to this effort also diminished significantly my ability to cycle Chaos Bolts on cooldown.
• Instant corruption across the board makes it a winner for all specs.
• All the builds except for the demonic sacrifice builds relied on pet for a non-trivial (7-10%) damage increase. It'll be interesting to see how practical pets are in Sunwell.
• The lifetap changes blow. I tap at 1123 in my T6+Sunwell gear. It is clear that this cripples mana-heavy specs by making locks devote more cycles to GCDs. Hopefully spirit will in more abudance on WOTLK dps caster gear to offset this difference.

This pretty much solidifies my desire to go back to affliction after the patch. For everyone else, I'd recommend trying out an affliction and destruction build on test to see what's easier to maintain for yourself. It looks like bringing quality DPS after the patch means being able to keep up whatever rotation you choose (i.e., no more face rolling, yay!).

 

DamnDirtyApe

I've been looking into specs for next Tuesday from a raiding perspective, and decided to try modeling some specs on simucraft. I downloaded it here: simulationcraft - Google Code

I ran this for a number of different specs, at level 70 vs a level 73 boss. I didn't want to mess with the other classes, so I left them to simulate as though they were level 80. I used my own gear in the calculation, raid buffed
The results came back like this (click to view):
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...imucraft-1.jpg

The specs I used were:
Warlock_Destruction_impSoulLeech
Warlock_Destruction_impLT
Warlock_Destruction_nocorr
Warlock_Affliction_CoA
the rest of the affliction specs are the same, the only difference is the rotation. Warlock_Affliction_NoDS moves two points from soul siphon to imp DS.

The surprising thing was that affliction and destruction came out very even at 70, with destruction a bit ahead presumably due to the crit and haste on tier 6 gear. Keeping corruption up in a destruction rotation seems to be useless, and trying to "execute" with drain soul seems to be a poor choice at 70.

I have very little knowledge of simulationcraft, any feedback is appreciated.

 

Aaryndon

Kambing,

First off, great post.

I'd be interested to see, though, how your DPS for Destruction changes if you use CoA to proc molten core instead of (or in addition to Corruption.

How you manage your imp would also likely have an effect.

So, if you are interested, performing a couple Destruction tests using a rotation that makes use of CoA (get a druid to put up Earth and Moon or do a baseline affliction test running CoA/CoD instead of CoE also). One with both CoA/Corruption and one with just CoA might add some interesting numbers.

I've actually had the best luck personally with: CoA, Corr, CB, Immo, Incinx5 or so, lifetap, conflag (after 12th second-tick of immo), then immo, CB, Incin... and so on. At that point it simply becomes a priority system like affliction:
1. Conflag after 12th second immo tick
2. Immolate
3. CB (slight non-optimal usage of the cooldown here but I don't think it's a problem)
4. CoA
5. Corr.
6. Lifetap
7. Incinerate

For me, that setup has outperformed affliction on dummies, so far.

Also, DirtyApe,
Why Suppression in your destro build? Losing a bit of mana cost off your affliction spells when you are only casting one seems a waste of points. I know everybody likes hating on F&B around here but if you are casting immolate and conflag then you may as well get the most, especially compared to +hit you don't need, and a small reduction in mana on 1 curse.

If you're up for it, try keeping the Improved CoA and dropping suppression in favor of a full 5 in F&B. And maybe see the differences if you run that build with or without corruption as well (untalented in either case, there's just no way to justify 5 in that when other spells contribute so much more.)

 

Villeraz

And also currently impossible. It seems to be often overlooked, but Drain Soul Rank 6 is the only rank of DS that has the 4x execute multiplier (according to tooltip information), and it is only obtained at level 77. So if you are doing any theorycrafting involving 3.0 mechanics pre-WotLK, keep that in mind.

 

Fulgurite

Can you try this build with CoA?

Maybe alter the spec a little too. Try dropping some Imp. Immolate points for Imp. Lifetap (I know it seems you are testing without LT, but in a practical fight it would be really helpful). Also, 2 points from Imp. Corr to Imp. CoA.

If you need, I usually drop points in F&B for other stuff that's more fun/useful utility (like Nether Prot). Doesn't seem like it would affect the DPS negatively much.

The quoted rotation is probably what I'm going to be using for DPS, personally. I like it the best, Affliction's not my style (so much to keep up with!). I also found that using Conflag properly was way too much of a headache, and required a lot of your attention unnecessarily (the DPS increase sucks, and can be countered completely with a different talent point allocation).

Without Conflag, you don't have any DoTs that you need to be constantly watching for when they're going to end. You can just have your timer and put it back up when you see it's gone, AFTER you finish whatever cast you are on. I think this is advantageous because it means you will have plenty of time to keep Chaos Bolt on cooldown, increasing your DPS over a rotation where you have to choose between using it right when it's up sometimes and letting Immolate fall off before Conflaging.

The other advantage I see with this spec is mana consumption. Looking at your data, this spec went OOM almost a full minute after the Conflag Fire Destro builds. That's pretty significant, and can result in MUCH less lifetapping.

 

Sephirah

Could you try this build with CoA added to the rotation and the Imp as pet?
Shame that Pandemic doesn't work on Dummies, probably those points could go to ISB instead for such test.

 

Shabaz

Reading about how questionable Conflag still is, what about something like this? (for level 80) Cut Conflag out of the build and work down to Unholy Power for some extra Imp Buffs. My other thought was working down to Improved Life Tap, but I wanted DA.

Unholy Power

 

kaib

Affliction being top dps spec is nice and all, however it won't do us any good as any given 25 men raid can NOT afford more then one Affliction warlock. Anything else is just completely desillusional. Shadow Embrace, Haunt, UA, Curse, Cor, SL - that is six debuffs already, out of 40. A solid 16% of the avaible debuff slots. There are no other six debuff slots avaible for a second affl warlock if they do not increase number of debuffs.

Other then that I am getting a bit frustrated, I was hoping they'd fix some stuff but it seems to mainly get worse. I copied a premade hunter, removed resil gems and used some hit gems instead, replaced the pvp trinket with a lvl 65 green one, picked some spec that looks roughly like a lvl 70 BM spec, used the silly wolf they give you instead of actually making use of my 51 BM talent to tame a special pet and ... did more dps then my warlock in pretty much every nax encounter, while my lock has very good swp gear and 5-6 lvl 80 epics.

In general the destro tree just looks really gimped right now, hunter pets have about twice the HP then warlock pets (not counting felguard and voidwalker, which should not see pve raiding ever, other then getting sacrificed for a shield) and the one tree they actually care about and put some work in is doomed to be a pve failure due to the limit of debuff slots on boss fights.

I figured they will fix it and everything and shrugged it off and then they posted the class panel stuff. For pretty much every class they looked at their main nuke/attack or just in general at dps and for warlocks, it is:

Pet diversity
More interesting rotations
Demonic Circle
Metamorphosis

Let's say that that sounds about as unexciting as it gets, I have tried to use dem circle while kiting on gluth once and never even bothered to test meta and I am lvl 80 since about 6-8 weeks on beta, it just looks that awesome for someone that does not care much for pvp.

In general I am a much bigger fan of destruction for pve, hopefully that gets fixed and can keep up with dps. But atm it's clearly affliction on lvl 80 for 10 men and then for 25 men, you need to coordinate with other warlocks.

 

KnThrak

Felguard not a PvE pet? Did I miss something? I mean I could see (provided his damage scaling works well enough) where an Imp could be a viable attacking PvE-pet, but like for Destro, moving him around enemy attacks is gonna be a pain.

SQUEAK.
-- (The Death of Rats, Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

 

Faldrath

So, trying to make sense of Destro at level 70. Given the apparent consensus that Conflag is still a DPS loss, a pain to time correctly and uses way too much mana, I wonder how effective a spec like this would be. Casting CoA and Corruption for MC uptime, keeping Immo up, Chaos Bolt every cooldown, Incinerate as filler, imp shooting Firebolts. Basic stuff, but it still looks fun and complex enough. I didn't take Fire and Brimstone because it looks a bit silly to spend points so deep down the tree to marginally boost Immolate. One question, though: would it be worth it to take a couple points out of Improved Imp and move them to Improved CoA?

 

Leil

This spec is the highest dps spec I've seen so far on the dummy. I don't about bosses, but I'd be willing to wager this is good for level 70 raiding. For Affliction...not destro...I'm excluding destro specs when I say this...

 

Kambing

Yeah I'll re-run later tonight with CoA for both builds. The reason I didn't is that I'm usually dropping a non-damage curse on fights, so I wasn't interested in seeing how individual builds scaled with CoA/not CoA.

I am actually using LT on all these tests. I'm trying to go 5 minutes to get a more accurate dps session with each of the spec/rotations, but unfortunately for all of the specs save for the affliction, I putter out of health and mana after 2-3 minutes. This is probably because I'm stacking 300+ haste, but it is definitely a sign of the lifetap changes (as I mention I tap for 1123 vs. 1701 on live) and how they affect DPS. Regardless, as a result, imp lifetap was one of things I wanted to work in there. I'll give that shot later as well.

Agreed about conflag. In theory (and correct me if I'm wrong, theorycrafters out there), it should outperform a non-conflag build with backdraft and fire and brimstone. However, it has two horrible properties in practice:

• Conflagging frequently clips an immolate. By clipping I mean two things: 1) I am (probably) shaving off an immolate tick since I don't have a dotimer on beta for a precision timer and 2) I am almost always clipping the damage of the last incinerate in flight because I always conflag right after an incinerate to maximize GCDs. The first one is more avoidable than the second, but because of the second problem below, you'll be inclined to clip often.
• Missing a conflag is brutal. Missing a conflag isn't like dropping a dot rotation because you can't conflag at any time, only at the end of an immolate. And if you do miss it, you don't get the benefits (haste) until the next immolate rolls around.

 

Kambing

I thought they had increased the debuff limit yet again. But I could be making stuff up. If they didn't, then yeah, it's a big problem. Although an ideal destruction build is now packing 1.5 additional debuffs --- if you count imp shadow bolt as half a debuff --- than before.

 

Leil

The are going to increase the number.

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Debuff slots

They might have already done it, b/c this is an old post.

 

kaib

I have played a bit on lvl 80 and in tests my felguard did slightly less then 300 dps (unbuffed, killing mobs solo) while succubus did slightly above 200 dps in the same setting. Now the difference between those 2 for a demon/destro spec is that felguard provides 5% dmg/-5% dmg taken and succubus 5% dmg/5% crit. I doubt slightly higher personal pet dps makes up for 5% crit, does it?

 

PyroTEK85

Don't worry, you're not reducing incinerate's damage if you conflag while one is in flight. The damage is calculated at cast time, not when it strikes. You can safely conflag as soon as you finish casting incinerate.

 

Leil

Ok, my finalized Affliction spec given the above poster has given me some ideas...I dropped Amp. curse because I believe it useless, and dropped Imp. Drain Life because I again, believe it useless. Its out of the rotation, so I don't see much benefit...its nice to get some extra HP in emergencies...but...meh. This is for level 70 raiding.

Specced into Suppression with those 3 points for mana conservation.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Still don't see Dark Pact being useful if you just take Improved Lifetap, its good to go and more mana. You'll find your pet runs oom a lot if you Dark Pact like mad, and won't get the mana back fast enough for it to be good. The Imp does not do DPS at all, and while is a good mana battery, does not churn out DPS with my gear and spec. I'll admit, I'm not that geared, so people take that into consideration.

Not speccing into Improved Fel Hunter because it is a waste since there is no Dark Pact. The Improved Fel Hunter + Dark Pact combo is 3 combo points, whereas Improved Life Tap is just 2. Its a one talent point savings, and the same effect for the most part.

The DPS of the Fel Hunter was nice, the Shadow Bolts hit pretty hard for being Affliction. I was getting 3.5k-4k Shadowbolts depending on buffs on me. I maintained about 1300 DPS and that is low again, because I have bad gear. The above poster in great gear hit 1700 DPS+.

Like the above poster, no Grim Reach because you need to be in range for Shadow Bolt anyway, so its a wasted talent. Maybe later on...I don't know about level 80 leveling specs.

 

kaib

They have stated in multiple posts that it's a big technical issue and after that was announced, they shifted a few debuffs to self buffs, like ISB. Since then I have not read anything about increased debuff slots, although I am not exactly following blue posts that much.
If they did, that would be very good news indeed. Anyone have a definite source? That blue post only up there sais 'we are looking into the issue' and that was 2 months ago, so not really taking that for anything.

 

Akston

They said they were going to but as far as i know nothing ever came of it.

Really? I thought all damage was calculated on hit and only crit was calculated on cast.

 

Kretschmer

Life tap now scales off of SPI; Dark Pact (as far as I know) continues to scale off of +shadow. Fel Armor adds 30% of your spirit into +dam.

Does this mean that Dark Pact users could circumvent +SPI for +dam based on item values? Or would that be putting the cart in front of the horse?

 

duhwhat

Is this for casts, or channels? The pushback changes seem to be related to spells with a cast time like Shadow Bolt and not channels, which have a fixed duration but are "instant cast". Fel Concentration is useful so your Drain Life/Drain Mana/Drain Soul won't be clipped.

 

Natasmai

I had found in testing that dark pact is based off of your +healing and not +damage or +shadow. I posted this as a bug, though I dont know what has come of it. The impact of this is that the flat fel armor damage increase is not included in the dark pact total, and neither is the +30% spirit damage.

I ran a ZA test on the PTR which was finally my first attempt at a raid on there. We cleared the place retardedly fast, but the one thing I noticed was that I never had to LT as affliction at all (I didnt even spec into dark pact). I caught myself using LT when I normally would have and when I looked at my mana totals, I was already above 50%. With a replenishment source in a 10 man I see no reason to ever run out of mana. I assume the same for a 25 man if you have 2-3 total replenishment sources.

 

Skellum

Imp Drain life, the one that affects the Drain soul? Which were it not bugged, would provide a very nice spike 25% and lower.

My Name Is Skellum, And I wear a Silly Hat.