Based on my simcraft runs on myself as well as some WWS reads, my imp (with empowered and improved) runs at approximately 550 DPS. That makes Unholy Power worth about 88 DPS personally. However, when I run an ISL spec, I spend a surprisingly lower amount of time life-tapping than you realize. The proc from ISL is enough that I can DPS nonstop for around 2.5 minutes.

Overall, I wouldn't think 5 points in demonology are worth the DPS that they return, but they might indeed be better than putting them in ISL, especially if you've got the LT glyph and 4t7 still. But I think it's one of those nitty-gritty YMMV situations. How often do you lifetap in fights in situations where you could have been DPSing instead? How much damage lost does that add up to? With a high intelligence to maximize ISL procs, I think you'd definitely see more potential from that.

As a Dest lock, should I use Potion of Speed when hero isn't up or use Potion of Wild Magic when it is up to maximize my dps? I'm leaning towards Potion of Speed since the simucraft is giving haste about a 1:1 ratio to spell power.

From the following command:
./simcraft player=Raistln,server=shadowsong,region=us calculate_scale_factors=1 center_scale_delta=1

I get
Sta=0.00 Int=0.62 Spi=0.67 SP=1.52 Hit=2.76 Crit=0.95 Haste=1.25 Lag=0.00


So, 200 * 1.52 + 200 * 0.95 = 494 whereas 500 * 1.25 = 625. So yeah, potion of speed, I think. Unless you're bumping up against the haste cap, which is something like 1600.

You didn't take heroism into account. Considering you get roughly 30% more spells in the 15 seconds of potion time, it's 494 + (0.3*494) = 642.

So the answer is wild magic while heroism is up. Of course, it's not that easy to calculate, but this works for me.

Huh, look at that. I did indeed forget about Heroism. However, simcraft can take that into account (perusing sc_consumables.cpp indicates support for both wild_magic_potion and speed_potion in the action strings).

So, by modifying the "standard" Warlock_T8_00_13_58.simcraft file to instead use Raistln as the base spec and gearing, and adding /speed_potion,bloodlust=1 as a high-priority action, I got 7946 DPS. Replacing that with /wild_magic_potion,bloodlust=1 yields a simcrafted DPS of 7940. That bloodlust=1 command makes it so the potion is used during a bloodlust.

At the end of the day, it looks to me like they're more or less the same. Personally, I'd probably still go with wild magic during a heroism primarily because there's less mana expenditure that way (I hate having to life tap during heroism), although speed potions are marginally cheaper on my server.

Where do you put the /simcraft command?

Simcraft is a program that simulates your WoW character. It runs in macintosh and OSX. I suggest you check out:

simulationcraft - Project Hosting on Google Code for more details. In related news, my introductory howto for simcraft is scheduled to run in my blog tomorrow (the 22nd) (click my sig link). Dunno if it's appropriate to be advertising here, but hey - it's relevant.

As destro lock, should I spec into affli for Yogg fights? Could I reach the same dps level with my usual 0-13-58 as locks in affly spec do?

If you're currently trying yogg+1 or +0, you should since phase 3 is much more important then. For other modes, it doesn't make that much of a difference.

Another weird Yogg question. I'm an average player and am about 4th-8th in the meters on Ulduar fights. Me and the other raid warlock are bumped to 1 and 2 on YS fight, but I was under the impression that with all keepers it was a flat dmg increase, so positions should be the same as the other bosses (on average, of course).

Both of us are destro spec, and I don't see why a % more dmg is better for us than, say, mages.

It's probably something about the fight besides the Keeper damage bonus, then. What you need to do is get a damage parse of the fight and compare it to fights where you're in your usual spot. Everything's going to be higher, so instead of looking at DPS numbers look at damage percentages. See if there's one or two spells that have jumped significantly as a percentage of your damage, or for other important differences. Ideally your raid will have a WWS parse or something similar, but in a pinch you should be able to get something just by digging through Recount.

I had a question or two about spellfire damage - mainly due to the plasma ball Mimiron loves to pelt the ranged tank with. During tonights hard mode attempts I took some 1.6 million damage with 1.4 million resisted or absorbed. The avg damage was 9100 (175 hits) to me vs about 14100 (13 hits combined) to anyone else that got hit by hit. As I seem to be taking a net 35% less than the others I was trying to see if the talent nether protection was helping at all.


Damage reduction talents used
Soul link with glyph 25%
Molten armor 6%
Nether proctection ????... Over the course of the night I had 92 nether proctection procs but I am unsure if it helped at all vs the "spellfire" damage.

Anyone else got an answer on the value of nether protection vs Mimirons Plasma Ball?

My build look similar to yours, and I got same result with Mimiron’s Plasma Ball.
Seems like nether protection doesn’t work with Plasma Ball, but work with Hand Pulse, which also does spellfire damage.

I think a lot of it has to do with the split zone, similar to that of Kalecgos in SWP. Meters get wonky due to the two areas in phase 2, in and out of the portal. Your best bet to get a real picture is to get 2-4 people to take logs, and make sure you have some that take the portals and some that don't. Then merge the logs with whichever logging utility you are using.

On the % damage thing, it could have some to do with ruin. We do get quite a large damage bonus on crits, and it may be effected in this way as such. (this is just me theorycrafting as I notice the same thing, I top the meters on some fights and others I float in the top 7, and if fluctuates week to week.)

What the hell is/are the Warlock Dens? I was just yelled at by some Warlock telling me Bane/Ruin were useless for Affliction because Shadow Bolt is a Shadow Spell, that the hit cap for 10-mans was 10%, the hit cap for 25-man Naxx is 13%, and the hit cap for Ulduar is 17%, that I should have Grim Reach as Affliction (without Destructive Reach, apparently that only works for "Fire Spells"), and when I told him to come here to maybe read up so he knew what he was talking about, he referred me to the Warlock Dens saying that people on elitistjerks were scrubs who don't do good DPS. He also said Affliction should do 8-12k DPS depending on gear.

The person is a jerk.
This is the above-mentioned website, and as far as I know, they don't have any issues with EJ whatsoever: it is a (virtual) community similar to ours.
But since it is, individuals with differing opinons are part of it as well.

I ran across an odd opinion on immolate/conflag casting in the destro rotation, and I'm in need of some input.

The opinion this other person gave is this: When immolate is about to run out, and conflag is off cooldown, is it better to cast immolate before conflag (so you don't consume a backdraft charge by recasting immolate), or are you better off consuming that backdraft charge with immolate by getting as many conflag casts off as possible?

Recast conflag asap, always.
The minor drawback of "wasting" a backdraft charge on Immo is better than having less backdraft charges over the curse of the fight, which would basicly be the result of delaying conflag.

I changed my rotation so that I didn't waste a backdraft charge. So basically I recast Immolate before conflag is back up again. Yes, it does go through mana a bit more but it will raise your dps more (I noticed almost a 300 dps change by doing this). Yes it is important to keep conflag as much as possible, however not at the cost of not having immolate up while using backdraft charges since you gain bonus damage with incinerate and chaos bolt while it is up on your target.

(I use CoD second because of the GCD/half a second wait time between when conflag is ready on the target)

My current rotation:

Immolate -> Curse of Doom -> Conflag -> Chaos Bolt -> Incinerate -> Incinerate -> corruption/Life tap if needed for mana -> Immolate -> conflag.... etc etc.

I jumped from a self buffed, 3.1k dps to 3.6k dps from this change in my rotation alone. My old rotation used to be:

Immolate -> CoD -> Conf -> CB -> Inc -> Inc -> Conf -> Inc -> Inc -> Immolate -> etc etc.

Again yes you are wasting mana and losing a few ticks of immolate, but that is made up in dps by always using your bigger spells Inc/CB while immolate is on the target and while backdraft is up.

What is the value of 2pc T7 for a warlock that has about 2700 spell power?

Need good math on this because napkin math shows always Conflagging when its off CD rather than recasting Immo is more damage.
The reason seems to be high crit rate of Conflag.

Target dummy practicing shows no noticeable difference to me.

The value of spellpower and of 2pcT7 are not related. 2pcT7 is worth between 3.5 and 4% crit for demo, destro, and demo/destro hybrids (assuming usage of both immolate and corruption in your rotation). There would be a very small variation in the exact number depending on haste (as haste goes up the effective crit number will go down ever-so-slightly).