• fallenman

In case you missed it: World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> The Debuff Limit and You

We changed how the game handles debuffs (ie negative state effects on targets) on creatures with Wrath of the Lich King. The old hard cap of 40 debuffs on a target no longer effectively exists. You can now apply way more debuffs to a target without them dropping off before their duration expires. The default WoW UI will not normally display all these debuffs, but they really are still there!


Debuff limit was removed and has been since the xpac was released.

 

Lothiron

The default UI not displaying all the debuffs on a mob could be a reason as to why people are still experiencing debuffs 'dropping off' the target. If they aren't displayed, several addons may interpret that as the debuffs dropping off, even if they are still there taking effect.

 

Darkstarrz

So I went back to testing a different variation of the 0-30-41 spec. The dps is spectacular and your incinerates hit like a truck. Considering im still using about 6 level 70 pieces I was able to produce some very nice dps. I placed my last talent into empowered imp, and was curious if you think puting the point in there would be more beneficial than puting it into demonic knowledge, or possibly even testing one in conflag which i would pop with .5 secs left on my immolate tick. Any suggestions to which of these 3 talents would be a best last spot to place a point in?

 

Zephro

Do you mean this spec?

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

It would be useful for people to post the exact specs they're talking about, since at the moment, with everything still in a state of flux, things haven't settled down to the point where there's a few universally recognised specs as there were towards the end of TBC.

 

Darkstarrz

Exactly that spec, but no demonic sac, and 2 points in improved healthstone. I've been testing the spec out with empowered imp and it seems to do very nicely. 3.8k dps roughly on the first two boss's and 4200 on final boss in heroic Violet Hold with only a flametongue totem for a buff for me, including my own. My imp is litterally a machine gun. I think I may stick with the point in empowered imp. The decision I was having trouble making really was, my final point in demonic knowledge for about 23 more spell power(I believe it comes out to roughly) or, that final point in Empowered Imp.

 

nikitabanana

Even better, use him to burn down tenebron, sac him, and throw an infernal on top of your add tank and watch it go nuts killing everything and doing cleanup post tenebron death for you.

 

Deuel

@ Rydya. I noticed you have conflag/backdraft in your spec. How much of this talent are you using ? ie. only on the run, conflag - cb/incin spam durning heroism, etc. Also have you spec'd 0-20-51 to compare its dps/dmg ?

 

Devourment

For 0/30/41 are you guys running massive amounts of haste? I've been gearing for affliction and I'm wondering if the high sp/medium low haste/crit will be effective as destro?

 

Simonus

Very nice damage indeed, congrats to that! Can you state your starting rotation by any chance? Do you also start with SB and Haunt and then apply all your other dots or do you have a different starting rotation?

As for your concerns, it is very hard to tell. Actually I would think that 1/3 in Molten Core would be sufficient but I am not sure either. I am skilled just like you, the only difference is that I have 5/5 in Improved SB and no point in cataclysm.

Yesterday I was doing some tests on the target dummies and since it was my first day of affliction in months, I tested for roughly 3 hours. The best I could do was selfbuffed 3600 dps sustained, I am soo curious to how much this will turn out tonight when we raid patchwerk!

Regards

 

Kabale

I did quite a bit of re-gemming yesterday to get more or less the same gear setup as you (I had loads of +hit gems which I switched for +Spelldamage) and using the same hit trinket to replace Skull of Guldan (which ranks terribly on DPS at the moment). It also allowed me to put 2 points into MC and 2 in Cataclysm, with only 3 points ending up in ISB (my armory should still have the spec).

I buffed myself to the teeth and only managed to produce just short of 5k DPS on this week's Patchwerk25, was quite gutted really, but playing at 3 FPS probably has something to do with it

I believe 2/3 Molten Core is overkill. Whenever I had a look at my buffs, it was active. Also taking into consideration that sub-25% you're giving up Immolate, it just doesn't seem worth the investment.

Edit: WWS has been uploaded: Wow Web Stats

Raid DPS is a lot lower so our kill has another 1min 30sec added to Fearsalot's which could explain the lower personal DPS (shorter kills tend to have higher values due to Bloodlust and other cooldowns). Still, I was surprised I couldn't push out higher. Can anyone spot something odd? If not, I'll just put it down to playing on an underpowered laptop...

Regarding Molten Core, it appears it dropped 5 times during the Patchwerk kill. I'll try running 1/3 MC next week and seeing what the difference is. I wasn't expecting to see it having dropped at all, so maybe it's still better to run with 2/3.

 

smoo86

/edit: double post due to bug

 

smoo86

/edit: Post about debuff limit gone - but theres already a thread, sorry.

 

Faldrath

So I finally managed to test a 31/0/40 shadow bolt spec on 25-man Patchwerk yesterday:

Patch WWS

I was pleased with the results. Additional info:

- my guild currently isn't the best place for a DPS caster. We have no moonkin nor an elemental shaman, nor a demonic pact warlock;
- this was my first 25-man raid, so my gear is still mostly Sunwell. I flasked and had +hit food and a firestone. Glyphs of Imp, Shadow Bolt and Siphon Life (next week I'll probably swap Siphon Life with Immolate), I still have 4pT6;
- I didn't get the Shadow Embrace effect (it went to the affliction warlock);
- I did not cast an Infernal, and forgot to drink a potion;
- I live in Brazil, therefore my latency affects my DPS considerably - during the raid it hovered between 350-500ms. Someone with normal latency would probably have done much more DPS.

Rotation is simpler than affliction: curse, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, SB spam when you're not refreshing DoTs (although you do need to refresh Corruption, obviously). This spec is obviously not up there with a full Affliction spec, since it misses a lot of the yummier Affliction talents. But I think this is a spec that might scale very well with gear (since crit and haste seem to benefit SB more than they benefit the Affliction tree). It would be interesting to see what someone with better gear (and latency) can achieve with this.

 

Beveline

I am currently using a variation of Buzzkill's spec and I found it a huge upgrade to the 2/3/5x spec I used when I first ding'd 80. I had somebody whisper me and wonder why (as I was resummoning my imp for the 3rd time in a heroic HoL run after we got half way thru) I wasn't a SacLoc anymore since I had the points...and that got me wondering:

I have so many things in place to buff the imp (glyphs and talents) but would I be further ahead "self buffing" my fire damage with this spec and an Imp sac:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I wouldn't have Chaos Bolt obviously, but my incinerates seem to hit pretty hard and it would almost simplify things a bit and allow me to keep both CoA and corruption up at all times, and I find that I am using my RoF a lot more in WotLK then ever before...what bothers the heck out of me are the 5 points you have to put into Unholy Power to get to DS but I guess that is the potential price of fame!

I have gear that hit caps me at 368 for raiding and have 1868 spell damage and ~17% crit with Fel Armor in my current raid gear. My guild is still working on clearing Naxx completely as everybody has been a bit poky about getting to 80 lately.

Am I missing something on how well this build COULD work versus a 0/20/51 CB build?

 

Shocktar

I ran the 2/13/56 spec last night for Sartharion 10 man, and couldn't stand it. The imp, even with some 12k hitpoints, was simply too fragile for me to keep alive, including binding it's movements and phase shifting to very easily accessible keys. I also found that running, just keeping up Agony and Immolate, Incinerating three times after a conflag, using Chaos Bolt on cooldown, and not standing in the fire is extremely difficult to do in practice. I use an N52, so my movement is extremely precise, and all of my important spells are very easily reachable, and I still had problems.

There were, of course, times where I could stand and run the optimal cycle, but its complexity severely hampered my performance. Any time I have to move out of something/closer to something/life tap, it puts the cycle in jeopardy. I'm of the opinion that simplicity is the most beneficial DPS stat, as strange as that sounds. The simpler a cycle is to run, the less it suffers from the inevitable non optimal cycle that happens in raids.

After Sarth, I switched to 0/41/30 which was much better. The felguard has much more survivability, and based on my relatively weak gear (about halfway through Naxx10), the percentage based crit increase from Demonic Tactics, combined with the simplicity of an Agony->Immolate->Incinerate cycle provided me with much better DPS and raid awareness. I suspect the 0/31/40 build will scale better with gear, due to Shadow and Flame, but that's mainly conjecture at the moment, and would also require a significant amount of pet micromanagement.

I'll post my WWS tonight, so we can use the hard data.

Gear is how hard you hit. Skill is how often you hit.
http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...tealth5325.png

 

Fearsalot

@Simonus - Starting rotation really depends on the fight, there's a good post on Fallenman's guide in the main Warlock section of the forums showing the different scenarios and what to precast if at all. For PW I usually open with a SB then Haunt going into CoA - Corr - UA - SL - Immo then SB spam (I went over my parse and didn't open with SB that particular time). I think the cooldowns just fall into place and feel more natural, for me that is anyway.



@Kabalé - I looked at your report and the numbers seem to be relatively the same in terms of spell damage. Honestly I think it was probably due to your FPS, esp with an Afflic rotation it can be very unforgiving. I had similar issues our very first PW kill having a bunch of useless mods loaded from leveling + max gfx settings + not having rebooted my machine in a good day or 2 = sad times.
Curious why you ran with an imp, and when did you drop your infernal, did you max out its 1min duration?
I think I will try the 1/3 Molten Core. I dont have a StasisCL report available for linkage just yet, but when I glanced at it I think Molten Core was like 73% uptime for that PW kill with 2/3 invested, still you made good point about the sub 25% and not immolating.

 

Krazen

It makes little sense to take soul leech without imp soul leech, or fire and brimstone without conflag.

Demonic sac as a primary spec is dead.

 

blgdinger

A spec that probably nobody has tried is one I pulled out of my butt. 0/19/52 seemed nice as it was working off of your imp.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft Along with conflag, corruption, and imp glyphs.

It seems decent except our server is a piece of garbage (lightning's blade) and I haven't been able to do patchwerk yet without severe lag occuring. One thing is that it's kind of mana intensive when you have all conflag/backdraft shenanigans going on as well as the rando instant shadowbolts. The rotation sort of goes bonkers... if anyone is willing to try it out and give me more feedback I'd love you.

Although one thing I would say is this spec seems completely inferior and useless without a decent amount of base crit.

 

miral

I started to raid as a warlock (affliction) now in WOTLK after having played as a healer for 3 years so I lack experience in some areas.

I'm currently having huge aggro issues, especially on fights where tanks cant be on the boss the entire time (Malygos, Heigan, Sapphiron etc) but sometimes I also find myself threat capped on tank n' spank fights like Kel'thuzad. When would be best to Soulshatter? If I do it early, I'll become capped again pretty quick, but if I want to Soulshatter later it means I have to just stand around for a long time since I'm already capped early on.

Does my tank not do enough TPS or is it me who's doing something wrong? If it's the tanks, there isnt much I can do about it, except (and this is why I post in this thread and not the others):

Spec 2/2 into imp DS. It would really feel like a waste to spec that way though, and would it make a significant difference in the end? It would also mean I would have to take 2 points of something else, most likely making it 1/3 Eradication. Is there a big difference between 1/3 and 3/3 Eradication?

I run with the 56/15 spec.

 

SageoftheTimes

I'd suggest moving some points out of Ruin for Imp. DS. Also grab the -2% threat/+spirit enchant for cloaks. Finally, consider using Drain Life instead. According to this post from the Affliction Rotations thread, it does better DPS (Extra Nightfall procs not included). Finally, consider exactly how much of your damage Shadow Bolt contributes, and reconsider Destro. While the points there are nice, you might be able to get more out of points elsewhere for either utility or survivability (if you're a DPS-junky like so many on this forum are, I apologize for insinuating that a survivability is important ).

Clams. Now. Stack. 9.11.2008 m/d/y

 

Vereku

For purposes of having the 100% chance for 20% crit off the imp, would this not be a better spec?

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

Zasz

Unless you are spamming searing pain, you seem to do it right. But something is definately going wrong if your tank cant tank against you in such raids. This can depend on many factors. Your gear, tank gear, group setting with more caster than melee support, his tanking ability and yours. But I doubt its a tank gear issue at malygos.

About soul shatter. You should get a feeling when you can use it. I use it when I can be sure that I dont reach the tank till the end of the fight again which normaly works. Bloodlust can change that quickly.

I say destroy the cosmos and ask questions later!

 

• dragon12

This is a very misleading post.
Suggesting that anyone use Drain Life instead of a proper nuke is plain madness - stick with SB with DS below 25%.


What kind of dps are you outputting? Unless you're putting out some insane numbers there's no way you should be getting near your tank on KT if he's doing it right.

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

 

Kabale

For the KT fight, there should be some adds still up that you can DPS before switching to KT. If this is not enough time for your tank to build threat and for you to Soulshatter 1-2min into the fight, he's doing something terribly wrong. The best you can do when it's too early to Soulshatter is to maintain your dots and keep yourself at full mana via tapping.

Fearsalot, I ran with an Imp as there was talk about it being better than Felhunter which I had been using previously. Also the raid was caster-heavy so I assumed it would benefit more from those buffs than the Felhunter would. I would say it did similar DPS (if not better) than Felhunter. The Infernal landed a few seconds before Bloodlust at 30% IIRC. I had its full duration but may have been pet-less in the last few %.

 

• Zakalwe

Keep in mind there's a threat drop in the KT fight, which can certainly get you in aggro trouble. But any good tank should be well ahead again a second or two later, so it's not a huge issue.