Can Soulshatter miss or not? Ghostcrawler states that "as far as [they] know" it can't be "resisted" (which I know is different from missed). However, further in the same thread he says that when Lich King came out, soulshatter was fixed to never miss, regardless of how much hit you do or do not have.

I have searched through all the patch notes since LK came out, as well as the undocumented changes through WoWwiki, and a full search here (which actually shows well after LK coming out, posters here still believing that hit affected soulshatter). I can find no evidence that soulshatter was fixed to not need hit.

With the 32 shard limit, this has been difficult to test on lower level boss mobs, and I can't just go into a raid with no hit gear and constantly soulshatter, just to test. Unless our other warlock was fibbing, he said that the time he wiped the raid was because his soulshatter missed (can't find it in our parses yet). So, does anybody know about this?

Ok, I have what I think is a real newbie question which I would never had asked if it were not for some of my guildmates pestering me about it lately. So please forgive me if I display total ignorance by asking. I'm also aware that it is not a question only concerning warlocks.

Concerning stats like Hit, Crit etc. I was always under the impression that every point matters, i.e. that it does make a difference whether I'm at 16,8% Hit or at 16,9% Hit. This impression was strengthened by all the math being done here at EJ.

Now it has been suggested to me (by longtime-players with a lot of proficiency in their respective classes) that only the full numbers (i.e. before the comma) would count; that it would make no difference if I'm at 16,8% or at 16,9%, but only whether I'm at 16,9% or at 17,1% Hit.

This really rocked my basic understanding of the game and the numbers involved.

So please, a quick clarification: does WoW take fractual percentages into account, when it comes to hitting or critting? Does it take into account tenth, or even hundredths of a percent?

I was in the unfortunate situation not so long ago where I was (with raid buffs) sitting at 16.82% hit rating.
Over the course of a long evening raiding, my incinerates missed 0.6% of the time.

Im pretty sure if I played solid for a few weeks, that that would have eventually become 0.18% of all incinerates I cast would miss.

I tell all of my guild locks that if they have a choice between 16.9% hit and 17.1% hit to go for 17.1, since if the small chance to miss occurs on a conflag, chaos bolt or CoD its a bigger dps loss and more importantly a pain in the proverbial.

So in summary, the fractional part would appear to used in the calculations, because if you were at 16.9% and wow made calculations based on the floor (16) then that would be 1% miss, eventually over, say, 1 million spells cast.

Processors can crunch numbers very very fast. There is no logical reason for wow to calculate on intergers instead of floating point numbers.

Does anyone have any tips for raiding Warlocks not having their DPS go to absolute shit on P3 Anub'arak? They're all complaining that without lifetap they can't dps for more than 45-60 seconds before they run out of mana.

Tap to full before phase 3 (I assume this is obvious). DPS until you get PC. Use your HS so you survive the first tick, and wait to get overhealed where you should then start tapping. You should be able to tap to at least half your mana pool everytime you get PC. Also, if it's still a problem, consider not AoEing during P3.

That shouldn't be necessary. Cleave AoE will not hit a cc'd target. What likely happened to the poster before you was that the pet was engaged by a mob (b/c it attacked you or w/e) before the mob was cc'd. Pets will do direct dmg to cc'd targets if that is what they're "instructed" to do by their AI.

Because mobs will pop out of cc often on champs, its very easy for your pet to target one of them without your active involvement. "Defensive" for pets means it will attack anything that you attack or that attacks you, and once it gets on a target it doesn't stop until the target is dead or you actively switch its target.

As mentioned you can start life tapping before P3 to make sure you can you go all out. Otherwise there are some tricks: Affliction provides a lot of healing thanks to Corruption and Haunt and that gives you a lot of breathing room to life tap (which is why I usually play affliction on the fight, able to dot all targets as well). Another thing to do, but can screw you up, is to wait for you to get Penetrating Cold. This leads to healers spamming you which will give you a lot of HP that you can life tap after Cold is gone, just make sure you don't tap too much.

Best Mana spec on anub phase 3 in my experience has been 0/13/58, demo is too mana intensive and its supposed to be the spec for anub if you like AOE numbers, where as with 0/13/58 direct damage on anub will count, usually i end up doing about 2.6 million to anub if im 0/13/58.

The way i get enough mana in phase 3 is basically making use of my death coil followed by a life tap or two, next when i get PC i will usually pop in a few drain lifes to help the heals and tap , and if all else fails pop my healthstone and lifetap, we usually use Frost protection potions on Heroic anub so first PC ticks arent too much of a problem.

ISL will usually give you enough as well to last through phase 3 employing above tricks.

Does anyone use/recommend an addon for scanning raid composition in pugs for things that affect our gameplay like
1) what hitcap do I need assuming any existing boomkins use their spells (Are there boomkins in raid and/or drannae in my party)?
2) Is there an ele shaman (tell me who are the ele shamans) or demonology warlocks, or do I need to go Demonology for DP
3) Are there firemages for scorch
4) Who else might be doing CoE or its equivalents, or is it me?
5) Are there priests, or should I read this 3.2.2 scroll?
6) Are there Paladin, or should I bang this drum?

At minimum, I'd like something that could list people, who's class and spec means they're likely to cast the buffs that overlap mine so I can whisper them directly instead of being ignored in raidchat. At best I'd like something that warns me that debuffs I was counting on, like +13% to all damage and +5% to all crit on target and buffs like +3% to all hit, were missing during the last combat, and I probably better convince someone else or take up the slack myself.

The last 2 I now handle with RaidBuffStatus/XRS/ZOMGbuff/BuffEnough

And I'd like it automated so that I can't forget one of the questions.

Personally I use wowraidsetup.com.

It has it's limitations, but it does the job for me.

There's also a similar one on mmo-champs: MMO-Champion RaidComp. I'm going to try the one listed above though.

I use raidbuffstatus in game RaidBuffStatus - Addons - Curse

-xone

A tick of immolate does 157+SpellDamage/5.

Immolate does 1245 +6/5*Spell damage

Imagine the event happened five times: you have the choice between 5 ticks at lower damage (or 1*Spell damage) plus a GCD versus 5 times the benefit of the increase of spell damage, or 6*(0.59*Spirit increase) (best case, assume lifetap glyph and buff)

a GCD is worth 3/4 of an incinerate = 3/4*(786+ 5/7*Spell damage) (6/7 with rank 5 Shadow and Flame)

so it will cost you 590 + 1.536 (or 1.643) *Spell damage and gain you 3.54*Spirit proc

To be worthwhile the spirit proc must increase your spirit by at least 167+0.434*spdamage (or 0.464 w rank 5 S&F)

So only do it if your spell damage before the trinket procs is less than 317

Neil, Flare of the Heavens is +850 Spell power. Not sure how spirit enters into it. And in truth I suspect the answer depends on how many ticks your current Immolate has had.

I misread SP as spirit. What I was writing before assumed losing just 1 tick

continuing my calculations, refresh if your spell power before the buff was less than 2916 times the number of ticks you lose.

Destro rotations being somewhat fluid: If in the middle of the bossfight, the CDs of conflag and CB line up to be ready at the same time, do you cast incinerate or CB next?

Conflag has a higher 'priority' than CB, so you cast it. CB has a higher 'priority' than incinerate, but you have backdraft now. And backdraft benefits incinerate more than CB.

Does anyone know which option has the higher DPS? Resetting the CB cooldown using up a backdraft after a fresh conflag, or casting 3 incinerates to use up the backdraft and then casting CB?

You go ahead and cast the CB, the sooner you cast it the sooner it goes off CD and comes up again for casting and it is significantly more dmg than an incinerate so the more you can cast throughout the fight the better even with the haste from conflag you likely won't be haste capped so it's still worth the CB over the Incinerate as it still benefits from the backdraft.

Possibly this is simpler than even this forum wants to deal with, but here goes.

As an unguilded casual raider (well, I was guilded under the hackers came along...), I find that I've pugged my way to where I am now. My gear isn't really that bad, however I often find myself at the bottom of the DPS chart. Considering I'm following the 3/15/55 rotation found on these forums, I'm left to assume that it's just me buggering up.

Here's where the problem comes in; I have no idea what my base is to be looking at for DPS. According to wow-heroes, my gear puts me ready for Ulduar, Onyxia and ToCr10, and Eye and Ulduar25. However nothing tells me what my DPS output should be for those so that I am able to tell when I've got my rotation timing down correctly.

Is there any kind of list or means of comparing DPS by raid? Preferably self-buffed on a training dummy, so that I can practice and know what I'm aiming for? Gear is nice, but it doesn't reflect skill, and somehow I don't think that 2600 self-buffed is enough to go charging into Ulduar25. Something that says "If your gear is on-par with Onyxia10, you should be doing _____ DPS. If your gear is on par with Ulduar25, you should be doing ____ DPS" would be immensely helpful, as I've yet to find an accurate and reliable one (people that are pugging seem to think that I should be doing like 9k DPS self-buffed to get into any of their raids).

It could also be just a weird gear issue and rotation. Here's some things I noticed to by looking over your character for 1 minute:

• You socket crit. Crit should never be gemmed, only spell power, and hit/haste depending if you need more hit (which you don't) or want a socket bonus.
• You put one point in Imp. Corruption. Corruption is often something only used "on the run" and never part of the standard rotation. Don't use this on a typical tank'n'spank, it will reduce your DPS.
• Your hit is fine if you run raids without a shadow priest or moonkin but if you do, you got too much hit. Hit that could be spell power instead.

In short, focus more on spell power and haste, it improves DPS the most. And keep the rotation fairly simply: Immo, Conflag, CB, Incin. It's hard to screw up by that. Then add a curse and use other tricks during the run.

One thing I am unsure of with respect to destro rotation is when to refresh immolate. If you have a short duration on immolate, but your chaos bolt CD is up, should you cast Chaos Bolt ( which will land after immolate fades, but be cast before it fades) or should you cast immolate which will clip the last tick of the dot?

Is the damage calculated when the spell is cast, or when it hits with respect to debuffs like immolate? I know that clipping your dots is bad for affliction, but for destro the presence of immolate buffs all your other damage significantly.

Similarly, if conflag is coming off CD such that you have the choice of incerinate, immolate, conflag or immolate, conflag, incinerate. Keeping conflag on CD as much as possible for backdraft, pyroclasm etc makes me think that the second option which clips the immolate dot will be preferable?

Kandiru - to avoid having a CB land on an unimmolated target, I throw an incinerate in there.

Never ever clip your dots. The damage of a spell is calculated when the cast finishes. If you can make sure that your CB finishes casting when Immolate is still up, then cast that, THEN refresh Immolate. Also, always cast Conflag ASAP and refresh Immolate afterwards if needed.

i currently have 23.46% crit (with out talents) i am planning to drop 2.8% crit for a lot more haste (i don't even know how much yet sry, but at least 4%).... on paper using scaling factors from SimulationCraft for Warlocks thread this would be a DPS increases. However i just wanted to make sure that i'm not going bellow the golden amount of crit.