well a lot of it is the fact that we're not casting a complex rotation: noob friendly, High SB damage, and i'm GUESSING that at 25%, DS is still best filler, if anything it'd be an interesting PW pars, i've wanted to try this for about 6 weeks now, but never did it -.- IF anyone tries it over the weekend(i'll try next reset) post!

It's simpler than affliction, but 41/30 demo or Meta is still fewer spells to cast. In this you have Corr, CoA, SL, Immolate. Regarding the DS-execute, you won't have haunt for the additional DoT boost.

Hey guys, sorry to get off-point, but I need some advice from the community. Quick background – I started playing in Dec ’04 and played all the way up until just 2-3 weeks into TBC before “retiring”. I’ve been back for 3 weeks now and am still getting my feet under me, but traditionally have been a very analytical and skilled player/dps’er. This website has been paramount in expediting my quest to regain my old form in as short of time as possible, so huge thanks to all of you here.

So to the point: My guild has had 3D cleared for a month or so, but we’ve yet to even bother with 10man 3D until now. So they’ve created two 10-man teams and mine will be going Sunday. I’ve been involved in only a handful of 3D encounters thus far and my damage has not been where I want it to be. Even in my gear, I’ve been able to top the meters in a number of Naxx encounters the past two weeks (some with and some without the help of DG), but on 3D…………lets just say I have not been satisfied with my output =p

I understand that 3D is torturous for Afflocks, but what I was hoping is that you guys could take a look at my gear/setup and tell me if I should respec for this to provide my guild with better value from me – and if so, to what? Orrr, if I should remain Haunt/Ruin and just tighten up? I feel as though with Affliction (which is always been my fav spec) my Haste is too low to be effective in 3D, but honestly I’m a bit lost on whats the best course of action here.

One of the things I’ve had problems with in our 25man attempts is pulling aggro on the whelps/blazes when I start to cannon-fire SoC between Drakes and get killed and/or for focus-firing on Drakes I just can’t get enough momentum sustained to do really good DPS and stay alive.

So any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Short answer for the purposes of the thread: affliction is fine for this fight, play to your strengths.

There are quite a few classes that are able to AE without sacrificing single target damage; affliction warlocks are not among them, so you shouldn't have to worry about the AE portion besides an inferno and occasional seed. You are there for heavy sustained single target damage on drakes, and if you are going by meters then you should aim to top damage out for Shadron (because other classes will have exhausted cooldowns for Tenebron while you are still going at full speed).

Demonic Circle should allow you to dps without much concern about messing up the rotation. Personally I like to arrange it so that I stand in a spot so that the fire wave coming from behind me will always miss and the wave from ahead I can teleport aside: it saves me from ever really having to think about the fire, one less issue for mental bandwidth.

Pretty much this. While my guild hasn't downed Sarth 3D 10-man yet (so close to it), I'm neck-in-neck with the mages on Tenebron and Shadron damage. Biggest thing I've noticed is to not AoE except for whelps and the occasional seed off the boss if the elementals are piling up. Just focus on your rotation down; avoiding dumb shit becomes second nature pretty quickly.

I have been having a "bandwith" issue as you put it on my 3D attempts, not being entirely confident where to best focus my efforts and the result has been sheer mediocrity on all accounts. Which is one thing 25man, but 10man.....I need to bring it.

Excellent feedback - thats precisely what I needed to hear. Thank you both.

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I went 0/53/18 meta/ruin demonicpact.
I enjoyed it a lot more and pulled about 600dps than i usually do on patch but that's using a doomguard ect..

All in all maybe they did a ninja coeff buff! heh idunno.

Thanks Nnayr, your post as well as other research, made me decide to respec to 0/53/18 haha. Just wondering though, what rotation would be ideal for the initial DoTs that are still cast in the rotation?

My guess is Immo,Corr,CoA; Then SB as a filler obviously. Can anyone tell me otherwise, or does this sound about right?

Also, which glyphs are you using? I was thinking the best 3 would be Felguard, Corruption, and Immolate. Not sure if CoA would be better than Corr or Immolate though...

Yeah i use Immolate, CoA, Felguard glyphs.

Rotation: throw up immolate, CoA, Corruption. sbolt fillers demo empowerment every CD. I meta during BL. I don't usually immo aura. I'm also just there to give the raid 350 spelldamage. Doing the DPS is just a plus i guess.

Can anyone confirm if DS is the best filler for demonic pact specced warlocks?

Its the best filler for an Affliction Specced lock when the target is under 25% health. (And will be standing long enough for you to get a tick off)
For anyone else it is not a viable filler really.

Good lord, every day is a school day huh?

Does this rely on there being a number of other locks in the raid? (read: afflocks)

I may well give this a bit of a test as I have been meaning to make a trip back to the meta build for a change

No, as you do not have any points in Soul Siphon as a demo lock.

Ack! ofc! /facepalm
Good point well made.
I still am surprised at the potential DPS increase of DS as a filler for a Meta lock in execute range. Thankyou for bringing it to my attention and answering my rather noobish (in retrospect) question.

Would it not suffer from spell pushback alot more than SB? Moreso as you cant talent to get the puchnack removed, so any fight that has any form of pushback, SB is winner.

How many iterations is that simcraft? For a change that small you need to run over 10k and I would do 50-100k. Also what stats did you have in for that run in terms of spell dmg, haste, and crit? I ran meta/ruin for awhile and can't believe that DS execute would be better than SB. None of the abilities that make DS scale are part of that build (Soul Siphon and Death's Embrace).

That was with 10000 iterations and default gear settings, but you're free to verify it yourself with different numbers: Warlock_T7_00_55_16.simcraft
Granted, the increase in dps is not exactly overwhelming, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Thanx for the suggestion for this specc, it was really pretty good and very different from my usual specc (55/0/16) but you wont do more dmg than affliction with meta specc, i did about 400dps less on each fight than i did with affliction, this partly has summit to do with me not being used to the specc and plus i wasnt entirely sure on what to do -25%, drain soul was ticking for round about 7k on average, depending on proccs it sometimes went up but my crit was extremely high, around 32% on tooltip so with SB's critting for 11k, i just carried on with the regular rotation. I dont think i maximized the /53/18 specc but i also think it wont beat affliction personally...

EDIT: man... slow typing ftl

Yeah it is mainly for a change of pace and being that I am giving close to 350spellpower to the raid and can still pull 6k on patch. It's not too bad. I just continue to sbolt post 25%. The stats on gear atm won't let any destro/demo build to outscale affliction.

I understand that.. but you don't have Death's Embrace as a talent when you are spec'd 0/55/16. Which is why this just doesn't make sense. I mean unless it is some sort of mana issue and life tap, but how can a 0/55/16 build have better DPS sub 25% using Drain Soul over Shadowbolt spam when it doesn't have any of the talents or the DoTs that give it the true execute effect.

Yep I believe you but it just doesn't make sense how this can be possible in a meta/ruin build. I'd need to do some actual raid testing to see what DS ticks for as meta/ruin. Just curious, did you sim just that file and not include any afflication locks?

Aye, tbh man im still pretty miffed how you did 5.7 on patch with this specc, judging by your buffs you didnt have any particular lucky proccs, nor lucky crits. Did you have a wrath totem + boomkin aura?

Again, Death's Embrace isn't the reason. It affects SB the same as it affects DS.

The latest SimCraft version allows you to set "optimal_raid=1", which provides all necessary raid buffs without having to simulate all the other classes. Also, as mentioned earlier, without Soul Siphon it does not matter if there are any other affliction warlocks present.


BUT: I did a few more sims with different fight durations and the results are not really what I expected. Seems like the increase in DPS does not stem from the better mana efficieny, because if I double the fight duration, SB actually comes out on top. Also, in very short fights DS is still better, even if you do not have to life tap.

My only guess is that it has something to do with heroism, and DS scaling much better with it (probably because of the 150ms of "lag" added to each SB cast, whereas DS only suffers from 250ms(?) every 5 ticks).
This would mean that during heroism it could be worth to use DS, but if heroism ends before the boss dies, you better switch back to SB. After all, it entirely depends on whether the "lag" values SimCraft uses are realistic or not. If you have a high ping, DS during hero might be worth a try, because it suffers less from lag than several short SB casts.