In the past with respect to meta, I believe the general priorities were:

1. use as often as possible. So if you're expecting a 3+ minute fight, pop it right away, and then again as soon as cooldown is up.

2. use during bloodlust

3. use with trinkets, potions, etc.

Ideally, you'll be able to do all three. Pop it multiple times, including during a bloodlust while trinkets are proc'd and you're using potions. But if you can't get all of those things to line up, I'm fairly certain two non-bloodlusted metas is better than one meta under bloodlust.

I haven't seen this discussed with respect to 3.1, but I suspect it will still hold true. The interesting question might be if you can only pop one Meta, and you're not getting bloodlust during the decimate phase, is it better to use it with the bloodlust or the decimate?

so with all the recent videos of 10man sarth being zerged down, my guild is going to go ahead and try it. Seeing how a majority of the fight will be under bloodlust, would it be beneficial for me to respec to meta,fg/ember or destruction for this fight?Im pretty sure it would be, just wondering which one would pull the best dps. thanks

It's looking like Molten Core isn't really worthwhile unless you have extra points (partially due to the reasons Marklar stated). (Edit: Let me correct myself, not worthwhile for a meta build. If you're doing something like 40/31 it's worthwhile.)

Trinkets don't really change much with spec (I suppose you might have a higher preference for ones you can pop instead of ones that just proc on cast) so I'll just direct you toward the Affliction warlock gear list: Dots and you: The Affliction Warlock Thread In fact those lists are generally good for all Warlocks, although specs do weigh different stats differently it's not going to be so huge that the items on that list are suddenly bad. At 80 try to get Mark of the War Prisoner and the Sundial as they're both obtainable without raiding and are very good. Other than that just go with whatever looks best while leveling.

If you're trying to kill them in the 70s I'd think being in Meta for almost half that would outweigh the higher DPS Affliction has. Plus Affliction takes about 10-15 seconds to get going. Just try it on a targeting dummy and see which you do more damage with in about 70 seconds.

Will immolate-> conflagrate still suffer from the current delay in 3.1, meaning you have to throw in a filler inbetween, or is it finally redeemed?

Also on a side note: Since our beloved curse of doom is making a comeback as deep destro, are there any good TTL (time to live) tracking addons out there?

Honestly this depends entirely on your raid composition. We've been trying it (50+ pulls) and I've been affliction mainly because it has the biggest ceiling in DPS, offers an Execute, I can throw a Talented CoE, and doesn't rely on a minion for that much of your contribution to raid DPS.

My attempts as Felguard Emberstorm are not as good as my attempts as Affliction.

If you don't have an Elemental Shaman and you have more than three casters, you may want to try Metamorph DP/Ruin, though be careful with Immolation Aura, you can pull all the adds onto yourself pretty easily.

Yes, they changed many of the workings of conflag, such as it can now be grounded and it doesn't blow through spellreflect (cry) but also they seem to have fudged some thing some where and you can conflag much more rapidly now.

Also TimeToDie - Addons - Curse should do the trick.

Relating to this, would you agree, jewelcrafting/tailoring is the optimal combination of professions, and would you recommend dropping enchanting in favour of jewelcrafting? In 3.1 that is.
Thank you.

simple question from a mage:

What are the dominant specs coming up in 3.1, and do they take Improved shadow bolt?

As you can see in this thread (first post...), about half the dominant 3.1 spec uses this talent. (Deep affliction and deep demono.)

I assume you're really asking "do I need to have an Improved Scorch mage in my raid," and the answer is yes, unless you have a Demonic Pact Warlock. Deep Affliction builds will not use Shadow Bolt in execute range, they switch to drain soul, so if you want near-100% uptime of a 5% crit debuff on the target, you need a very deep Demonologist.

This completely ignores the fact that stacking Imp. scorch has a very high cost for the mage as well. In order to pick up the debuff, the mage has to either give up a dps glyph or spend at least 7.5 seconds casting scorch. An affliction warlock can maintain it by weaving in a 2.5 second cast after 30 seconds, or less if nightfall procs. Unless you are looking at a very long fight, the mage is likely to lose more dps picking it up and maintaining it than the warlock will lose just maintaining it.

@P51mus:

From the DP spec section of the actual Simcraft 3.1 OP:
actions+=/demonic_empowerment/life_tap,trigger=10000,health_percentage>=35,metamorphosis=-1
actions+=/life_tap,glyph=1/metamorphosis/curse_of_doom,time_to_die>=90/immolation,health_percentage>=35
actions+=/soul_fire,decimation=1/immolate/corruption,health_percentage>=35/shadow_bolt/life_tap

So your rotation is DE whenever it is up, Life Tap if you are below 10000 mana, the boss has more than 35% and you are not in Meta, or you do have the glyph and it is up, then comes Meta, then DoD as long as it will tick (90 is used because the TTL accelerates so 90 =~ 60), then immo as long as you aren't decimating, otherwise SF *then* immo, corruption if not decimating, SB. Don't know what use the last Life Tap is for though.

If boss is not yet dead and you're OOM (IE, can't cast anything else), cast life tap?

Does anyone know if there is an addon I could find that will tell me when my lifetap buff from lifetap glyph comes off cooldown so I am not staring at my buffs durring an entire fight. I am using pulse which works great and flashes a huge icon in the middle of my screen when my cd's are ready to be used again. Is there any way to add the lifetap buff from the glyph to that addon that anyone knows of. thanks.

Did you try to set up msbt/sct to give you a warning when the cooldown is over? Since 3.1 is not yet live in Europe, I can't give you the exact directions on how to accomplish this. Do a quick search for "trigger msbt" with google and you will find the instructions.

There is nothing ignored.
If there are:

• DP-Locks in the raid - no need to scorch
• Aff-Locks in the raid - no need to scorch until Execute time unless you get him to keep on weaving in a SB than
• all other raid specs - no ISB

everything else is left to your favorite raid buddies and not to Emolate

I think ForteX shows the ticks in the bar, I personally use DrainSoulTimer : WoWInterface Downloads : Warlock, it playes a notification sound (Finish him) when the mob is under 25% and every tick also has an accoustic signal (which can be changed via .lua I think)

Hi btw, nice forums, lot of info ^^

Looking at Fel Synergy:

1. You have a 50% chance to heal your pet for 50% of the amount of spell damage done by you.
2. You have a 100% chance to heal your pet for 30% of the amouth of spell damage done by you.

So for one point you get 25% healing of spell damage...(50% * 50% = 25%)
For two points you get 30% healing of spell damage...(100% * 30% = 30%)

Is the 2nd point worth it?

Since Haunt and Life Tap glyphs aren't available yet and Immolate and Siphon Life glyphs are now worthless for Affliction, would the recommended interim glyphs be CoA, UA and Corr?

Yes they would. The other possibility might be Shadow Bolt - given that it's now a much bigger part of our rotation, it may well have shot up in it's dps value from mana saved. It'll be useless when you're lifetapping every 20 seconds, but without the life tap glyph you won't be doing that just yet anyway.

I know there's the PVE 3.1 spec discussion thread, but is there one for PVP?

I'm assuming that, for PVP it is a toss up between Affliction and Demonology. Even then, what would the recommended specs be?

I haven't yet done the 0/41/30 (I like my Felguard...), because its PVE based but I'm wondering what the PVP specs are for this new patch.

There's some discussion on this in the PVP forum. Try this thread.