None of the minors really affect raiding, from what I can tell. Go with whatever flavor you like.

Hello,

First time poster but a recent, avid, reader. I have read all of the posts on this topic but some reason I have not have a good enough explanation as to why the CoA glyph doesn't give you 4 more seconds to "play" with. The same damage is going to be dealt either way so I don't see where people are saying you actually don't get the extra 4 seconds to; cast 2 shadowbolts, refresh other dots, or even life tap.

That IS ultimately what it does, but consider it this way:

Imagine a fight 48 second long, where you cast only CoA and SB. With the unglyhped CoA, you get 2 full cycles from 2 casts, plus 9 SB per cycle. With the glyphed CoA, you get 1 full cycle, and miss the last four ticks from the second cycle, including the two highest damage ticks.

As the length of the fight increases, you eventually pick up 1 extra GCD worth of time saved by not casting CoA again, which is "yours" to do with as you please. However, it takes 6 cycles of CoA, or 168 seconds before you get it, and then you get ~60% of an SB, which isn't that much damage (1920dmg over 168s), which works out to about 11.4DPS.

CoA IS a DPS increase over no glyph, but it's worth relative to other gyphs is debated [here, in this thread even!]

However (in my opinion), CoA is a great glyph for Destro, as it gives you two more chances to proc MC before you have to recast it.

Agreed. There is of course Glyph of Souls I think which reduces the mana cost for Ritual of Souls by 70% but pretty crap. I got Unending Breath as well after doing all tiresome swimming in Dragonblight but that's just me

Glyph of Curse of Exhaustion will be the best minor glyph in 3.0.8. Pair it with grim reach and you have a 42 yard range instant cast curse with no CD that tags mobs and snares them. Again not useful for raiding.

My other favorites are unending breath and eye of kilrogg.

EDIT: I take that back. Glyph of CoEx is useful for kiting gluth adds.

Do you mean here with or without Amplify Curse?

I assumed most/all deep Affliction took AC, but now as I think about it, it only affects one spell...so with no CoEx, is it worth it? Guess not.

Has any modeling been done yet for UA? I imagine the gain is similarly small (1 SB per 13x15s or so...)

The main issue with the UA Glyph is that in PVE gear you are going have enough haste that the glyph brings the cast down under the GCD which is bad. UA is a much better PVP glyph.

You don't get 4 seconds. Imagine this scenario...

You have 168 seconds and you're aiming for 100% CoA uptime.
Without the glyph, it takes 7 global cooldowns to keep CoA up 100% of the time. (168/24 = 7)
With the glyph, it takes 6 global cooldowns to keep CoA up 100% of the time. (168/28 = 6)



The glyph saves you 1 global cooldown every 168 seconds. It really is that simple. The DPS increase is thus TINY. The global cooldown equates to a little more than one shadowbolt per fight.

If you have Amplify Curse, this means you're getting 1 second of extra dps time every 168.

Thank you for those who responded and explained the CoA glyph better. I'm currently glyphing Corruption, Siphon Life, and Immolate. Seems those are the best way to glyph for affliction locks.

Has anyone given thought to Glyph of Imp for affliction over Glyph of Corruption? Since imp is a better dps pet for the affliction spec, I'd be curious to know the difference. Particularly if the affliction spec has points in improved imp.

I am just now trying the glyph of imp. I noticed fully raid buffed as affliction my pet does around 360 dps without the glyph, and i figure 10% of that would be better than glyph of coa or corruption. Also looking into getting some of the imp talents if i can get more hit and drop the hit talents.

I still don't believe that an imp is better than a felhunter for your choice of an affliction pet.

Wow Web Stats
http://wowwebstats.com/rfow3ky3ku41s...40337a4800017b
Wow Web Stats

His damage isn't THAT bad. He's around 300 DPS. You also must factor in the spirit buff assuming you don't have spirit elsewhere. Your Felhunter gives you an additional 19.2 spell power, along with providing the raid with the buff as well.

I'm aware the bug is screwy, but I'm yet to see math or WWS that would convince me to say "always use an Imp over a Felhunter."

There is Divine Spirit from priests.
Divine Spirit - Spell - World of Warcraft

Improved Divine Spirit.
Improved Divine Spirit - Spell - World of Warcraft

And that doesn't stack with the Fellhunter spirit buff.

The bolded part is specifically about Divine Spirit. None of our priests have picked up DS yet.

Consider that an imp can do the same or more dps on those same fights if that same warlock were to use it in that same raid. Now consider that the felhunter is bugged, and could possibly (though not always) stop attacking and "freeze".

Plus, I can't think of a single 25 man raid that wouldn't have a mage or priest with divine spirit in it, so the felhunter's buff is truly useless.

Spell Lock, high magic resistance and even devour magic are all things not to be ignored however. It's nice not having to care so much about your Felhunter and he'll generally live through most non-physical AoEs no problem, he can sometimes dispel debuffs off you if your dispellers are slow, or dispel them off mobs for the same reason, spell locks on fights like KT or during trash to save rogues from having to pool energy, etc. etc.

I think the Felhunter's potential slightly less DPS is nulled by his greater utility and survivability.

I think ideally Blizzard would want you to use both in different circumstances.

I ran with the Imp Glyph over the Corruption Glyph the other day in a 25man Naxx. It certainly does boost my damage up a bit as expected. Increasing the Imp's damage by 1% means about 45dps difference on a perfect pet management fight, and it showed similarly on our WWS report for Patchwerks. (The WWS report is expired now, so linking the two would be useless.)

However, I switched right back after the Naxx because while running it I realized that my loss in DPS on movement fights made the glyph not worth it. In movement/AoE Damage fights, pets typically have a fair amount survivability issues, especially the Imp. We normally have the choice of: health funnel the pet OR letting the pet die. This will cause severe drops in DPS either way. Typically, with a 300DPS Imp, having to keep health funneling is actually less beneficial then keeping it phased or letting it die. So by investing in an Imp, your overall loss in DPS is even greater. There's also problems with fitting in Health Funnel into an Affliction rotation. Basically, with the Imp Glyph, it plays does not enable the lock to execute the fight in an optimal manner outside of a fight like Patchwerks.

Thus, in the end, if you want to push maximum DPS, the Imp is the mathematical better choice. However, when taking everything into consideration, the Corruption Glyph allows for better performance overall.

PS: I do have a lot of practice with micromanaging pets, but mostly in arenas. (I play Haunt/SL with a Felhunter and Meta with a Felguard/Felhunter.) I'm not sure if this has any impact from my experiences and my observations tied in with my math.

Thanks dude, appreciate the feedback I have placed a post in the pve discussion thread which further investigates along the lines of the topic of the imp, the imp glyph, and some imp talents/specs. Check it out any feedback would be great.

The UA glyph does not appear to lower the gcd.

I show a gcd of 1.5 using no haste gear and this macro:

/cast Unstable Affliction
/in 0.5 /script local i="Unstable Affliction";local g=GetSpellCooldown;local s=g(i);local e;local t=5;local j;while t > 0 do j,t,e=g(i);end;t=GetTime();DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(t.." "..s);

From the latest patch notes:
* Glyph of Felhunter - When your felhunter uses Devour Magic, you will also be healed for that amount. (Old - Increases the critical strike chance of your Felhunter's Shadow Bite ability by 0%)
* Glyph of Conflagrate - Your Conflagrate spell no longer consumes your Immolate or Shadowflame spell from the target. (Old - Reduces the mana cost of Conflagrate by 20%)


I assume this makes the conflag glyph a must for destruction locks. Will it take over for the CoA glyph?

The new Conflag glyph paired with Backdraft is going to be interesting to say the least.

The Glyph of Curse of Agony is a very poor affliction glyph. Curse of Agony has 12 ticks total, four low damage ticks, followed by four medium damage ticks, followed by four high damage ticks. All the glyph does is add two more medium damage ticks (these occur at the beginning, before the low damage ticks). On top of this, amplify curse even further reduces the value of this glyph, causing the GCD for CoA to be even lower. This glyph will also hurt your ability to dps adds effectively (Think Anub'rekhan adds) since the high end damage all occurs at the end, where the add would have already died.