@shabbleflab
You will notice a link to your armourt automagically appears next to each and every post you make. In addition without actually seeing any WoL or WMO parses it would be hard to give any in-depth analysis. re: gems. I guess you went back to SP, at least on the armoury you only have one haste gem, crit is pretty much a waste, go back to SP for those. You do not have any tier bonuses and that will be hurting you. Throw away one of those non-tier 245 pieces and get yourself at least the 2pc T9, even if it is 232. If you are anything like me, a trinket with On Use is actually an On Forget To Use so if that is the case, try binding it to one of your spells so it is always used - suboptimal use is better than not at all.

Speaking from a tank's perspective it is very critical to have good communication with your tanks on this. Kleopatra is absolutely right that it's about situational awareness. If you notice you are passing the tank on threat let him know and he can plan a taunt (matches his threat to yours) + chain some high threat abilities to jump over you to buy you some more slack. That way you won't have to pull back dps at all, which with current tank gear shouldn't be an issue after the first couple seconds of a fight. This is especially important for fights with large dps modifiers that affect tanks to a much smaller degree (since they don't affect bonus threat on abilities, only the threat inherent to damage) like Twins or Hodir.

To compute them you first load all your gear using head= etc.
Then, imagine that you have 4pt9 with the loaded gear.
Run the simulator, it will compute your dps value with both tier bonuses activated (say it is X).
Once you have done that, you add this option:

tier9_4pc_caster=0

This overwrites what simcrafts automatically gathers from the gear list (which is, that in fact you do have 4pt9 bonus active).

You can now rerun simcraft, and the output will be with exactly the same setup, minus the 4pt9 bonus (say it's Y dps now). By simply doing X-Y you have the value of 4pt9.

From here you should be able to find every tier value (minding that if you wanna compute the 2p bonus you should also disable the 4p bonus).

Figured this would be the best thread to ask. Been raiding for awhile now and been pretty content with the way our dps have been competing with other classes in raids. Lately however the Mages have just taken off to a whole other level and I am struggling like crazy to even come close to them. Either I have fallen behind on my rotation or Arcane has just gone through the roof dps wise. Have anyone else noticed the same trend or is it just me?

Is there a place with updated scale factors for tier bonuses, preferably for 3.2.2 and 3.3? I checked the simcraft thread and only saw stat scale factors. Build is 3/13/55 btw

Like Rhadamantys already told me a few posts back, you can use simcraft to determine these values for you seperately since these values change depending on your other gear.

I'm pretty sure the information you have readed is out of date, you should definately use Purified Dreadstone for the socket bonus. You can use rhadatip's gem optimizer with scale values that you can obtain through the spreadsheet or simcraft to accurately know how you should gem your gear.

For warlocks in the Heroic Anub encounter, is our role primarily as single target DPS on the boss or through AoE, and if so, is Rain of Fire or Seed more potent for overall damage?

It depends totally on your guild and setup. If you have enough dps to kill the adds without the warlock doing aoe damage, you won't need to. If you need more aoe damage, you can bet the warlock will have to help!

I have a Warlock that's in mostly in iLevel 245 gear. I was pulled out by my GM yesterday because I had some Hit Gems in my set up. With these gems I have about 17% hit rating. Without, just over 11%. He had me regem for more spell power. Is this really the way or is the hit I just lost far more important?

Oh and I am a Destruction Lock.

There's not enough information in your post about your character or your raid makeup to determine whether your raid leader is wrong or not.

Bottom line:
17% hit is the goal. You could possibly get 1% from a Draenei in your party, 3% from a Shadow Priest or Moonkin in your raid, and another 3% if your warlock is talented into Suppression. If that's the case, 10% hit from gear is perfectly fine. If you are missing any combination of those three buffs, you will need more hit. Unless you are at 17% from a combination of gear, raid buffs/debuffs, and talents, hit is always more useful than any other stat. Above 17%, it is useless.

Destro is not my main spec, but the sim logic should be the same.

My second hand info puts the new Black magic at a 10s buff of 250 Haste with a 35s internal cooldown and a high proc rate. So the average haste it gives is in the 68 range, compared to 63 Spellpower for a 1H weapon or 81 SP for a staff. Run those numbers through the stat weights of your spec of choice and that should give you some idea which is better.

Of course, stat weights do shift every patch. But at least this will give you a baseline to judge by.

So my alt is a Warlock and I've been looking around to find out, would it be worth dropping an infernal during the last <60 sec of a fight over having the imp out or would it be an overall dps loss. Asking for Destro spec.

It would be a loss of DPS. Imp's DPS plus Empowered Imp procs to you outweigh the Infernal's DPS.

Does anyone know if its worth casting a second Immolation aura if you have glyph of Meta?

Assuming you cast your first immolation 1.5s into meta (after a charge) you are then only going to have 4.5 s of your second immolation aura before you drop demon form (and I assume loose it?)

Yes, you'd lose the aura when you shift back. It's not worth using a second time.

Reign of the Dead (trinket discussion has further analysis)


Regarding socket bonuses: is the socket bonus of +9sp worth gemming correctly to get the bonus, or should one ignore socket bonuses & gem for sp in all cases (outside meta requirements)?

That's not an easy yes / no question as it depends on how many sockets the item has and what colors they are. The easy way to figure it out would be to grab your stat weights and do some quick dirty math. We'll use my stat weights as an example

SP = 1.50 DPS per point
Haste = 1.20 DPS per point
Crit = 1.00 DPS per point
Spirit = 1.20 DPS per point

So suppose we have a blue sockets with a +9 SP socket bonus, here's how the math plays out between a simple +23 SP gem and a +12sp / 10 spirit gem

23SP 8 1.50 = 34.5 DPS

12SP * 1.5 + 9sp * 1.5 + 10spirit * 1.20 = 18 + 13.5 + 12 = 43.5

So in this case, socketing to the bonus is a better idea than straight SP gemming.

The general rule of thumb I use for sockets is this: if it doesn't have a SP bonus, ignore it and go for straight spellpower gems. If it does have a spellpower bonus:

Yellow: SP bonus of 4 or more, socket with an orange SP/Haste gem
Blue: SP bonus of 5 or more, socket with spellpower / spirit

When you get an item with 2 or more sockets, then it becomes a little harder, but the same general concept. Figure out how much DPS you get out of straight red gems, and then figure out how much you get by using the right colored sockets.

There is no need for "rule of thumb napkin math" anymore. The mod in my sig will answer that exact question for you (it will actually tell you what is the best way to gem any item that you want).

Does anybody know of a way to maintain DoT order using DoTimer?

E.g. I would like it if Haunt, UA, CoA, etc. always stay in the same position the moment they're cast.

It's frustrating to have all my DoTs changing order in my DoTimer list when they're dropped or refreshed.

Thanks in advance.

No idea regarding the Dot-timer issue. I'm a big fan of ForteXorcist, because the Dot that needs refreshing first, is on the bottom of the list sorta speak.

I have a question myself. I want to know my scaling values of my different stats, because I'm not sure if my current gem's are optimal for my maximum dps. I applied to a rather high-end guild and i want to min/max as much as possible.

Now i tried to put my stats into a sim-craft, but I just can't to figure out how these things work.

Is there anyone who is able to help this desperate gnome and run the data through a simcraft, so i can input the correct numbers into rhadatip?

This is my armory profile: The World of Warcraft Armory

Thanks in advance,

Regards, Cerebro

I got 2 questions to ask about PvPing with Warlock.

1. What is the hit cap for PvP if your level 80?

2. What are the stats you recommend to max to for PvPing? (stats like resilience, spell power, stamina, spell penetration, and critical strike rating)