Fireye

To go back a bit, yes, we can only apply the stones to ourselves. I tried this when 3.0.2 originally hit, and got a specific error message saying I couldn't apply this to someone else's gear.

However, last I checked, it is still possible to apply weapon oils to other peoples weapons. I believe I did this post-3.0, but I'm not 100% sure.

 

Akj

I've had my imp do ~400 dps as destro and a demo spec would lose empowered imp but gain unholy power & demonic empowerment. 5% crit is roughly 5% damage with ruin and the armor value of bosses is going up by 10% in WotLK. I'm not claiming that the imp will be the way to go but I think the options will be closer than you think.

 

turturin

The felguard doesn't lose any dps talents in the 41/30 build (well, it loses imp. DT, but that's almost entirely offset by the extra 5% crit now coming from DT itself). Felguard's in naxx are doing 1k-1200 dps. In good gear, with talent and crit buffs, your crit is going to be high enough that an extra 5% crit from imp will be less dps than it would be otherwise (i.e. diminishing returns). With buffs to the standard coefficient of corruption and immolate, 0/41/30 is looking like a very strong build, and yes, significantly stronger than 0/40/31 with an imp.

 

Nnayr

My only concern would be keeping your Felguard alive without Fel Synergy.

 

turturin

he's 11.7k raid buffed (I'm only just over 12k) at 70, and he'd still be over 10.5k without the fel synergy talent. If the melee is getting heals, so will the FG. Agreed that it could be a prob on some fights, but for the most part with some decent pet management the pet should do just fine. Some of us were playing the spec in raids when the fg had 7.5k, no 2 pcT5 bonus, no automatic attack from behind, and doing fights like gruul, lurker, and VR .

I've heard the raid dmg argument, but honestly, in sunwell, he hardly ever takes serious damage with the 80% avoidance. I don't expect that encounters will be any harder on pets in WotLK than sunwell is, but i certainly could be wrong.

 

kaib

Dunno, does it make much sense to compare a lvl 70 to a lvl 80 spec? The hybrid specs are pretty much non-viable on 70 as for warlocks the good talents you want to reach are 26 to 30 in affl and demon and 35 to 40 in destro. Means you just don't have the points to pull off any good crossovers on 70.

The spec that Haldol posted is kind of what I was running on beta lately, only shifting the 40 points into destro and not into demon. What you are comparing here is:

Demon:
- Demonic Knowledge
- Demonic Tactics
- 1 point in Mana Feed (my imp consistantly runs dry on beta even with JoW on the mob, without soul leech)

vs

Destro:
- Backlash
- SnF

It's actually tough to say which one looks better here on paper, espacially as multiple people in the other warlock thread posted that SnF got changed/nerfed. I never really paid attention how much spelldmg an imp would give me with full raid buffs.

In any way I liked the 0/30/41 build better then full destro builds, especially when there was no 2nd warlock in raid and you could not conflag and then cast 3 incin as there was no immol on the mob then. I am also a fan of Shadow Fury, so much trash is aoed now and stunnable. Also in a lot of situations I like RoF better then SoC, mostly when its 4-5 mobs that get aoed. Using SF on them first gives you a fairly high chance to proc Molten Core which then boosts the following RoF. You can also go seed/(seed/)shadow fury/finish off with RoF. By then MC should be up.

 

Natasmai

I am currently running a 0/46/15 build in our raids and I have found to be consistantly the highest DPS lock in our raids. We run one of each and all are good at their specs. I am by far not the best geared or the highest skilled lock out of the 3 of us, but I can top them every fight. As far as Felguard taking damage, the only 2 places I have noticed any significant damage is on Council and with Circle of Healing being changed to a smart targeting spell, my felguard gets plenty of heals to cover any AoE. I dont manage him at all, he attacks automatically when I cast my curse/corruption and he comes back when combat ends. All I need to do is refresh my Doom and Corruption and spam shadowbolts. For those who dont know, Circle of Healing can actually be targeted onto the boss and it will pick the lowest players (all melee, maybe the tank) to heal. Pets are included in this by default if they are low enough.

My crit rating with firestone applied (improved) is ~36% before raid buffs, crit is the most important stat for this build. I tried a heavy haste gear set and it was terrible. The problem with haste at 70 is no fight lasts long enough for it to impact your damage. Almost the entire boss fight is under Bloodlust and for the few seconds before BL you are casting instants and the short time after BL isnt enough to care about hasted bolts. Crit is king with ruin.

I like Affliction and I always have. I am pretty good with it and I am leaning towards that at 80. But at level 70, with all the nerfs and as easy as the raids have become, there is no reason to be straining yourself with cooldowns and procs and spell priority lists and STILL not do as good of DPS as bolt spam. I'm resting my brain for a few weeks before I start leveling. It is really fun playing this spec.

 

• dragon12

One thing I'm a bit concerned about with affliction is that Haunt has a travel time - for a debuff that will be mandatory to keep 100% uptime, it adds an unnecessary complication as we have to know the travel time on the cast so that it will re-apply before it drops off.

Haven't seen anyone mention this before so figured I'd bring it up.

Stop thinking with your nuts and start thinking with the black and bitter ball of hatred buried in your chest

 

Mortala

Hence the change to the cooldown on haunt - 8 seconds allows you to ensure you account for travel time on your haunt.

 

• dragon12

I realise that, but for an already-complex rotation it adds an extra complexity that seems out of place compared to all other debuff-applying spells that I can think of.

Stop thinking with your nuts and start thinking with the black and bitter ball of hatred buried in your chest

 

Xorash

While on the topic of lvl 80 hybrid builds, I was curious if anybody thinks UA / DS would be viable (41 / 21 / 5 +4). Haunt seems too difficult to maintain 100% uptime to me, so I was wondering how close DS would come to it considering DS works on DoT's and SB's.

Clearly ruin being unobtainable hurts, but some people earlier in the thread speculated that at 80 demonic aegis may outperform ruin for affliction. If DA actually did turn out to be nearly as good as ruin, then I feel like UA / DS could possibly be viable.

 

Natasmai

I continue to see people stressing over the haunt uptime/CD issue. I fail to see how it is an issue here at all. Haunt has an 8 sec CD, it has a 12 sec duration, and it doesn't have a 4 sec travel time. You cast it as soon as it comes off CD, immediately after your current cast or GCD is finished. Please stop referring to "rotations" and look at everything as a priority. Haunt is the most important spell for affliction, it therefore is the highest priority spell. You never want to cancel a cast to cast something else, but as soon as it finishes refresh Haunt. The only downtime you should ever have is if it runs out while moving, even then you have a 4 sec (-cast time -travel time) margin of error to reposition and recast it.

SPELL PRIORITY LIST, not spell rotation.

The issue/complexity of affliction is letting other spells drop while recasting haunt, but Haunt is the highest priority, so other spells simply have to wait. You will have times when one or more of your DoTs might fall off at the same time the CD for Haunt comes up, use your priority list and refresh in order of most damage/importance. As I said a few posts up, I am playing Demon right now because it is easy, like the raids are easy. It is high burst damage since the fights have a short duration and the trash is 100% AoE. At 80, when things are actually a challenge and fights last longer than 2 minutes, I will likely find myself watching a priority list casting Haunt, it is complex, but not out of reason.

 

Melchior

I think people are getting a little carried away with the idea that Affliction is "complex" compared to other specs. It doesn't feel like it is rocket science by any means, and currently it does feel like you are getting appropriate DPS results in return for a more attention intensive play style.

The only thing I want them to do with Affliction's arsenal right now is get Immolate out, permanently. Affliction has plenty of spells to cast, and Immolate offers absolutely nothing of interest. I was hoping the recent buff to SM would do enough to be able to drop it, but then they went and buffed Immolate's coefficient so it's right back where it was on the priority list.

 

Dimeron

Comparing 41/30 vs 31/40

Crit: 7% increase, 10% increase for imp.

SnF: Assuming 2600 spell power from all sources excluding demonic knowledge.
the base DPC not considering critical for Incinerate is increased 371.4 damage, or 14% increase
the base DPC not considering critical for SB is increased by 445.7143 damage, or 16.8% increase

Which means, unless 7% critical increase and demonic knowledge wins out against 14% dps decrease in incinerate. I can see 41/30 being equal or even superior at early gear level, but once one has collected enough spell power, 31/40 will almost always win out.

It is even more apparent if we assume the change to shadow and flames is a bug and should be additive instead of multiplicative, then in which case no way anything can beat out SnF if main source of the damage is from incinerate/SB.

 

mayer

It seems there is a bug with EA after refreshing corruption either with haunt or drain life.

After the first apply of corruption it ticks for 794, casting drain life to refresh cor it drops to 710 per tick.
I think corruption get the lower spellpower coefficient (93%) when it is refreshed by everlasting affliction.

 

• Maels

Just leave Immolate out of your rotation. It's a negligible dps boost, that is probably nullified (or worse) by the effort of keeping Immolate up while sacrificing other dot uptime. Unless you can 100% consistently never sacrifice another DoT's uptime for Immolate (just above SBolt on priority), just don't cast it.

 

• Emolate

Curious suggestion.

As Affliction, Immolate has a higher damage-per-cast time than Shadow Bolt. Why would you not cast it?

 

turturin

Two reasons:
1. the dps increase in theory does not always play out in practice for the timing reasons already mentioned. This has been an observed effect that many in the community have commented on throughout TBC. There is no reason to think it will change in WoTLK.
2. debuff slots

 

• Maels

With the Shadow Mastery buff and factoring in Imp. Shadowbolt, I'm sure the DPCT is not good enough to warrant say, losing a potential tick of UA every 2 Immolates. Somebody would have to do the math (I would test online, but beta's gone), and you could judge from there. But in practice at 80, I felt Immolate was a waste.

 

Darian_TruBlade

Are you factoring Imp Shadowbolt into UA? I believe the last word was that Imp Shadowbolt does not affect DoTs.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

Ivans

That's only a 14% dps increase to incinerate. Incinerate is still going to be the largest portion of your dps in one of those hybrid specs, but immolate,corruption(not sure if the math supports it with the coefficient change), and CoA scale with DK and not with SnF. I'd guess you're still probably right but I'd imagine the recent coefficient change to corruption and immolate probly make the picture a little less clear and up the value of DK.

So the comparison really is:

14% damage on incinerate vs 7% crit (10% for the demon) and the spell damage from DK added to all damage sources.

 

haldol

Thank you Dimeron for your reply. Really appreciate the number crunching you did, because i hate doing that. A couple thoughts i have,

I think you minimized slightly the benefits from going from 31 to 41 points demo. that extra 10 points gets you a verly large amount of spell damage from DK, the Crit (which you mentioned) and also Demonic empowerment for the imp which is a significant crit bonus for him.

Can anyon comment on how much spell damage i might expect to get from Demonic knowledge with my Pet and I fully buffed in a raid at level 80?

I know right now at level 70 in my raiding gear with no buffs, and NOT in raid, DK gets me 115 spell damage. If casting Corr, Immo, and Incinerate, the amount of spell damage I'm thinkign i'll get at 80 with DK will Far outweigh SnF's 14% dps increase by going 41 into destro. Particularly with the recent buff to Immo and Corr's coefficients. I would also expect Demonic knowledge to scale with raiding gear.

another point i think worth mentioning, someone mentioned that getting 20% crit from talents is overkill, b/c you are going to get lots of crit from Gear and you will have Diminishing returns on crit. I'd argue that having that crit allows you to itemize for spelldamage preferably over crit.

hal

 

Darian_TruBlade

The only potential issue in itemizing away from Crit is item budgeting. Items with multiple stats have more overall item values than those which stack fewer stats. However, given that you have options in the form of Int, Spi, Haste, Hit and Spell Power it shouldn't be much of a loss to avoid Crit.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

Soul

I'm not sure where you'd be losing a potential tick of UA every two Immolates, since both spells have 15s durations. If you block spells together, you could chain UA and Immolate together so they sync. Every other time you cast those two spells, you chain SL in as well... that makes the three spells sync up in a nice block but reverses the priority of Immo and SL when you consider in terms of DPCT (makes things a lot simpler to remember, though).

Otherwise, if you're casting based on priority, then just cast Immo when you notice you don't have it up. It's a pain to try and maintain constant Immo uptime, but putting it up when you notice it's down is probably higher dps than forgoing it entirely and casting just Shadowbolts in its place.

I am wondering if it is worth putting 2 points into Molten Core just for the sake of Immolate. With just all your DoTs running, you get 18 applications of shadow damage over 12 seconds. Add in Haunt and 2 shadowbolts and you're looking at ~90% Molten Core uptime, which is a decent boost to Immolate for 2 talent points.

 

Darian_TruBlade

The issue with Molten Core for Affliction is that you get severely diminishing returns with each point. The first point is worth 6-7% more damage for Immolate, but the second is only worth an additional ~2%. Depending on what % of your damage comes from Immolate the second point is probably better spent elsewhere, if not the first.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]