CrazyScot

Suppression vs Demonic Empathy is a no brainer as far as I'm concerned, but I assume you are aiming towards fire which as mentioned previously isn't a reasonable DPS build compared to shadow unless you can spend 30 points+ in the destruction tree.

 

Xizenta

It doesn't proc off autoattacks does it? Felguard uses one spell per 6 seconds, with what, a 20% crit chance? And if it procs you get +3% damage... Doesn't seem worth it to me compared to all the global cooldowns i waste from missed curse of agony and corruption. Maybe if I was on curse of elements duty and I wasn't putting dots up so often.

To me this talent seems like one of the worst ones in all three trees, unless the tooltip is misworded and it procs off of melee.

 

MSJoeDaddy

If you only look at damage per cast time, then sure 1300 shadow damage beats 700. Sure dots have a higher damage per cast time than shadowbolt. But that's pointless if your dots dangle and lower your dps.

If you cant keep the rotation up all the time, then it seems pointless to cast dots at all. And anytime your rotation is interrupted ( stun, silence, running away, needing to lifetap, the trash dies before you can get a full rotation, etc ) your dps will suffer.

This is a major flaw of dots, and I just don't see dots being worthwhile for anything other than stuff like patchwerk.

 

• dragon12

If you can't keep dots up you shouldn't be playing a warlock. This is a thread about getting the most out of Demonology, not about trying to figure out how to compensate for bad play.

You can be sure that any stuns, silence, movement affect shadowbolt spam more than dots.

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

 

Xavar

In the end your success or failure is determined by how much damage you do to a boss. On Trash it doesnt really matter if you are maximized.

Its exactly like with Druid healing. On a fight with lots of silences or movement or interrupts, Druids are the most effective healers.

On a similar fight, the most effective damage dealers are going to be the ones who can do damage during those transitions. Hence, cast your dots, they are ALWAYS an improvement. (Unless we run into an issue with DD scaling vastly better like with SB pre-3.0)

 

CrazyScot

Am I being completely stupid here or are you, because as I see it having full possible dots running whilst spamming Shadowbolt increases DPS.

There is no such thing as a "rotation" with any warlock spec, our cooldowns are too different to manage such a thing, there is only a system of priority and shadowbolt on this list would be the lowest prio. You wouldn't cancel casts to get dots up and you wouldn't renew dots before they finished their duration; you just simply maximise your GCD usage throughout a fight, even without maths I see that as being a higher damage return per global cooldown than shadowbolt spamming even on a fight without any movement.

 

Splot

On the previous comments on hit rating I'm going to have to say that I won't be changing the comments until either the spreadsheet is updated for wrath or somebody posts some maths. The entire hit rating section needs to be read in full rather than just pulling out the last paragraph.

Hit rating is required, it is still the cheapest stat and there is still a point where other stats generate a higher return. If your tank is lower threat then you will still need soul shatter. Even though the Felguard makes up 20-25% of the meta lock's damage, without the threat reduction they are on an even footing with a fire destruction lock with the talent (WWS parses appear to be indicating similar or higher total DPS).

Once either the spreadsheet or something similar is seen as correct I'll then edit in that reference and update accordingly.

 

Nve

I've got a couple questions regarding this spec/rotation
Spec: 0/41/30
Rotation: CoE -> (Trinket?) -> Corruption -> Immolate -> (Trinket?) -> Incinerate

#1: Is it better to trinket before the DOTs or after? I'm talking about a standard +spell on use trinket (currently using Mark of the War Prisoner which is +346 for 20 seconds on use). Does this decision change if it's during bloodlust?

#2: Lifetapping. Normally we'll bloodlust at the start of a pull so Sated wears off towards the end of the boss and we can bloodlust again (unless there's a special mechanic we need to save it for). During this first bloodlust I'll normally use a mana potion and come out of the bloodlust with about 30% mana with 0 lifetaps during bloodlust.
Should I be lifetapping normally during bloodlust or not at all?

#3: Also, towards the latter parts of a boss fight, I'll get to the point where I go OOM, lifetap, cast spells, OOM again, and repeat. At this point is it preferable to lifetap just once or lifetap twice? I ask this because sometimes I'll find myself cut off between corruptions, incinerates, and especially immolates which are mana-costly.

#4: Does the talent Master Conjuror affect the % modifier on firestones? ("While applied to target weapon it increases damage dealt by direct damage spells by 1%..."). The tooltip shows an increase in the spell critical rating but not the damage % modifier.

 

Xizenta

#4, No it does not affect the % modifier on either firestone or spellstone, only the flat number of haste/crit.

#2, It doesn't matter when you lifetap. The value of your casting time may increase during bloodlust, but the GCD (cost of lifetapping) goes down by a proportional amount. In fact, it may be marginally better in some cases to lifetap during bloodlust because healers have more heals to spare.

#3, Obviously this depends on how many heals are available, I like to do as many lifetaps as I can back to back when that option is open to me.

#1, Your spell damage when the dot is applied is the number that is used for the duration of the dot (ticks don't fall in damage when your trinket buff expires,) it doesn't matter much when you use it.... Just be careful not to clip an immolate, haunt, or UA dot because if the dot based on a higher spell damage is active when you finish your cast, the spell will fail and not refresh the dot.

 

blasfem

I'm currently running a 0/56/15 Meta/shadow spec

Unless you have a elemental shaman in your raid with totem of wrath, the benefits from Demonic Tactics
just seems too great, raidwise, to give up .. in favor of FG/Fire .. which may be better personal dps, but is it more overall raid dps ?


Meta also just seems too good, being right there, to give up (using during bloodlust/ heroism, etc)
and the differences between Meta/Shadow vs. FG/Emberstorm just seem a little too miniscule and situational to outright
declare FG/Emberstorm the clear winner.


Anyways .. my main question is

Your stat priority lists Spell DMG > Spirit/Haste > Crit

Is this only for FG Fire ?

I had assumed Crit was better than spirit or haste since it scales with the FG when you have Demonic Tactics or Demonic Empathy, while your pet sees no benefit from haste ... plus it helps ISB and scales better with Ruin.

 

Medieval

I run as 0/50/21 with 2006 spell power ( with FA and Felguard), 460 haste and around 20% crit. My gear isn't in any way special I have the T7 10 man robe and the 25 man pants. I break 2k dps in heroics just with SB on trash and Corr/CoA/SB on bosses if I try hard enough (I'm lazy). I was in a PUG in Heroic Vault of whats his name in Wintergrasp the other night, and I broke 2700 dps with raid buffs but no flask/pot/buff food- we had a couple of heroisms though.
Aside from being an utter pain in the ass for healers ( I have to fucking tap and asking me not to is moronic imo), I find it sustainable, but I don't think there's any point in dotting trash.

Question: at which point (if any) does haste cap? Also, for a nuking spec, is hit>spell power/haste>crit still a valid priority queue?

( maybe this should have gone into the simple questions/answers thread, if someone could change it I would appreciate it)

 

breclon

I am currently running a 0/56/15 fire spec


I have seen in several posts on here that an incinerate build is judged inferior to a shadow bolt based spec, but was curious on the basis for that. A 10% boost on two spells (Incinerate and Immolate) would seem to be a better deal than on just shadow bolt.

If it is an obvious question, I apologize for I'm not terribly good at the math involved. I've mostly haunted these forums for tips in BC and used leuiler's spreadsheet, never posting.

 

Trickykid

2) Unless something changed in 3.0, the last word was that heroism/bloodlust does not change the GCD at all.
3) The goal should be to end the fight with no mana. For every life tap that wasn't necessary you could have been nuking.

 

duhwhat

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

A FG/Emberstorm spec sacrificing 2 points from Tactics into Fel Synergy was suggested to me by my GM for extra survivability. Thoughts on the benefits vs the 4% crit loss? I'm assuming the extra crit from Fel Synergy's Int boost is negligible.

 

Akj

2 points seems overkill but I have considered moving 1 point from DT to fel synergy. Has anyone run the numbers to see roughly how much additional spell damage we gain by specing into fel synergy (via demonic knowledge)?

 

Splot

The 0/41/30 fire build lets you access emberstorm which is the biggest gain for fire in the tree. Without this you are better off putting the 15 points into ISB, Bane and Ruin and casting Shadow Bolt. If you load up the 303d version of the spreadsheet and play with the talents this is as close as you can currently get to entry level T7 raiding with the current tools. The gain (based on a partly developed tool) is noticeable.

 

Kiristo

If this is just in regards to raiding, then I would agree with the 56/15 metashadow build. But for lvling/pvp demo I like this.
Also, is the 3% AP bonus from demonic brutality worth it? Would it be worth taking one point out from the 56/15 build and putting it into Mana Feed?

 

LCN

Try not being offensive even if your opinions differ from others'.

Rotations don't suck on fights where they get interrupted because there is no set in stone rotation, only spell priorities. And true, under some circumstances the dd element of SB outdoes dots; if the dots cannot run their full duration for some reason. See now, stating that politely wasn't so hard.

 

RoyalBoss

I guess I'm a little confused(and I read this earlier)...everybody seems to be talking about a 0/41/30 felguard build but what would be the difference between a 0/31/40 build like:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I was thinking put a point into mana feed so the imp will never go oom...but you could also put a point into DK to get 4% more spell power from your pet...

Just wondering if anyone has given this a shot, or if Felguard > Imp?

I mean, with the imp out you have 5% more fire dmg and 5% more fire crit as well...compared to just the 5% dmg & 5 more less dmg taken from the felguard.

 

Trickykid

The difference is the 10 points you take from Demo and put into Destro. You trade a FG, 10% crit rating and DK for backlash and SnF and an Imp. Keep in mind the gained crit from the imp is lost pretty quickly from dropping Demonic Tactics. SnF is not as big as it was in 2.0 since you'll be casting CoA/Corr/Immolate. If I recall the sims, they come out pretty close, though.

 

Tinava

I was looking at this build as well, anyone have wws with such to see how it plays?

As far as glyphs/rotation, I assume glyphs would be imp/corr/immo, and keeping pet out on some fights or saccing in other situations.

Rotation would be one of the simpler ones...curse > corr > immo > incin repeat as dots end.

Am I correct in my understanding, or would there be more benefit to saccing overall?

 

Trickykid

I think the only parse I've seen with an imp below 10% of damage done is for an affliction lock (who didn't have any pet buffing talents). Destro can do 5-10% of its damage from shadow, so an imp will be more DPS unless he's dying mid-fight.

 

CrazyScot

The difference isn't as you mention it, overall the difference is that you lose 2% crit (5% crit from Imp MD and 3% from Backlash), Demonic Knowledge (which at current itemisation levels is more than outdone by SnF) and the Felguard.

I've been running the 0/31/40 build myself the past few days and it just seems to be a lot more sensible at current gear levels. The felguard has a few fights where it becomes painful to use and the imp is certainly a lot more fire and forget.


I find that currently I'm only using Immo/Corr glyphs (maintained FG in case I respec to 0/53/18), rotation wise it opens obviously with corruption -> curse -> immo -> incin*x then for the rest of the fight moves into a tap -> corr -> immo -> incin; adding renewing your curse at the beginning of the tap cycle, I allow downtime on CoA as well to maintain my incin rotation unless no Molten Core is up

 

Bofink

Herbalism: about 33 spell power when using Fire seeds on cooldown.

yeah sure but then again u can use yr fireseeds combined with spellhaste trinkets, heroism and such things.

 

• Zakalwe

Not sure why opening with Corruption is "obviously" better than opening with CoA. Part of the reason we're casting these dots is for Molten Core uptime, and since CoA ticks more often than Corruption, surely you want to get that up there first?