I think the reason 0/41/30 is so powerful is that it weights your damage in fire and crit, not shadow. You're gimping your destruction damage by spreading your points to Shadow DoTs and Suppression. Besides, if you put three points in Cataclysm, that gives you some +Hit for Destruction which is where the majority of your damage is coming from anyway.

Anytime i get a bright idea about a hybrid spec that deviates from the cookie cutter specs posted here, I am usually disappointed. I'd stick with the tried and true 0/41/30 if I were you.

The reason I thought about was I wanted to stay with the shadowbolt. It just feel natural and special to me as a warlock. Mages have fireballs of some sort. Also I feel meta/ruin has given me better dps that 41/30. So instead of putting pts in fire talents, I thought, why not go with shadow talents.

Thankfully people that want to perform to the best of their ability don't rely on feelings and instead use tools like simcraft that let us see that there is no way your spec will perform as well as the variations already being discussed.

The demonology specs that are popular are popular because they perform best.

I really think we need to push for full Demonology buffs for the Doomguard. Now that he's been nerfed in damage and health, I can't see the reason to leave them out. Unless adding the missing buffs to the Doomguard to do more than an additional 500 DPS, I don't see it being a problem.

I wonder is somebody has the skillz to simcraft what 3.1 Demonology specs would put out with a Doomguard if ALL of our buffs worked just like if it was a Felguard? That would be extremely interesting.

First of all - hello, I've just registered but I've been reading EJ for quite a while now.
I'm playing warlock for a long time and I rarely needed any help - my experience is usually helping me with any doubts, but I have to say the Meta/Ruin builds are something new even for me.

Anyway, I have question according DoTs and Meta. I use CoD, Corr and Immo and ofcoruse I try to keep them up as much as possible, but when I pop Meta I usually end up spamming SB like crazy, often popping additional wild magic / haste pot and putting dots at the very end of Meta for dmg bonus. Tho I've seen comments that dots even with meta on should be up all the time, but never seen any numbers. To be honest, I'm not really considering dots THAT much important in this build and that's my main problem at the moment - I know they give me the awesome tier bonus and lots of damage, but is it worth refreshing them even when I'm in Meta? Are they that important to keep them with max uptime and focus on them more? Would like some clarification on this matter.

And additional question, not really with the topic. Here's my armoury: The World of Warcraft Armory . With this gear and spec on I'm usually doing around 5,5k DPS on stationary fights. I have to admit it's not really an impressive score, but I haven't had an occasion to try it all with a proper raid comp, guess it would be a bit higher. Anyway, I need an advice about chestpiece - should I replace Gown of the Spell-weaver with Valorous chest? I did some calculations and Valorous chest appears to be better, but I have doubts if the additional sp and, aditionally, 4pT7 will make up the crit and hit loss.

They are worth casting, assuming they're going to get their full (or near) duration. While you may not see them as having a large DPS increase, they have higher DPCT compared to Shadow Bolt. Your job while DPSing is simply to look at all available things to cast at any given time and prioritize them by DPCT.

The (slightly) longer version of it would be:

• Under Meta you gain +20% on ALL damage.
• DOTs have better DPCT over SB, this is why you prioritize them over SB out of Meta.

Now, since both DOTs and SB benefit from Meta by the same amount, you still have that DOTs have better DPCT than SB. Therefore you should still prioritize them, even under Meta.

Your note on refreshing them before Meta ends is smart. It might even be convenient to clip them, but the thresholds at which you want to do that should be calculated.

Meta lasts long enough to allow you to refresh your entire rotation. The same is not true of any pots/trinkets you hit, so I like to try to time it so that I'm refreshing my DoT rotation right as I hit Meta and pop pots/trinkets to gain maximum advantage. Ideally, I do this on a boss just as Curse of Doom expires so I can refresh that under maximum benefit. Of course I can't always time it that well... if Bloodlust gets popped, you gotta go. Generally though, I watch my timers and simply continue my rotation after Meta/charge/Immo aura and popping trinket/wild magic.

Edit: I don't do Demonic Charge all the time. You can use the time you are doing instants to run in manually and save a GCD. Run in while you refresh your curse and re-up corruption.

Forgive me if anyone has asked this before...

I'm spec'd FelGuard/Ember and was woundering what my "target" DPS should be... is there any way to figger that out based of talents & Gear?

Also, am I the only one that feels like most of my Gem Slots are dedicated to hit?

Hi all,

Another one of those "long time lurker, first time poster"s. Here is my first post.

I have been looking at talent calculators and stuff and this one thought has been driving me crazy.

Molten Core's move into the demonology tree and the new Decimation talent seems to suggest that the developers' intent is for demo locks to use both fire and shadow. With a deep demonology build (i.e. lacking Emberstorm in Destruction) your default filler is Shadow Bolt. Using Shadow Bolt as a filler means much higher uptime for Molten Core. And for what? Just Immolate's? It would be a lot of fun to weave Incinerates whenever Molten Core is up and then to start weaving Soul Fire's under 35%. Even under 35% you would still use either one of SB and Incin according to MC. This way you would also be easily keeping up the Imp SB buff for the raid.

But the problem is that without Emberstorm, Incinerate is always inferior to Shadow Bolt. And conversely, with Emberstorm, Incinerate is always superior to Shadow Bolt. This means that SB/Incin weaving never makes any sense.

What do you guys think about this?

Hit gear will come with, well, better or different gear, and that will allow you breathing room on your gems to push spell damage. There are a few pieces that have some hefty hit on them such as the wanton spellcaster legs from Malygos or Faerlina's Madness, etc.

In terms of your DPS and what you should be doing - check out the Leulier's Warlock DPS Spreadsheet thread for the latest non-3.1 spreadsheet and plug in your armory information, set raid buffs, set pet and spells being cast and you should get a pretty accurate representation of where you should be. Also, you can download simulationcraft from simulationcraft - Google Code and monkey around with that for similar results.


EDIT:

I think that's why we're seeing the hybrid build of 0/40/31 at the top of the list right now. Takes advantage of Molten Core, Demonic Knowledge, and the improved firestone, while boosting immolate several ways and picking up Emberstorm and Conflag. There's an amazing amount of overall synergy in the build and the simulations show that.

I'd love to see a reverse Molten Core (or at least a shadow boost proc) effect somewhere deep in Demonology - perhaps tied in with Demonic Pact and pet criticals or under Improved Demonic Tactics. A chance on fire damage to increase shadow damage done (or tied via the pet crits) would help provide similar synergy to meta specs, and likely push them to be more in line with hybrid specs.

Just wondering for 3.1 41/30 if droping a point or two out of Dem Tact and putting them into MC is beneficial or not? Esp considering SF weaving <35% and the build is fire heavy

0/41/30 would have to drop all demonic tactics or take points out of master demonologist, to pick up both decimation and molten core to enable soulfire weaving. If you take points out of master demonologist then you also lose demonic empowerment. I think for a felguard/emberstorm to get molten core you have to start making serious compromises. In short Soulfire weaving appears to be the way the meta/ruin lock catches up on damage compared to other specs.

I think it would be nice if Molten Core was moved further up in the demo tree (so that destro hybrids can't pick it up) and then buffed a little. In this way a non-emberstorm incinerate would be competitive with shadowbolt under moltencore and deep demo builds would actually weave shadowbolts and incinerates, the two basic filler nukes of the warlock class. I believe this would make for a very unique and entertaining build.

This is the build i mean. You don't need to take out points of master dem at all:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...0&version=9733


EDIT: Oh, and Backlash and ImpImm are only placeholders til I know which of the two holds better weighting

I was wondering the same thing, but for Meta/Ruin. Even 10man raidbuffed, my Felguard has near 100% uptime on Demonic Pact. So at that point it comes down to a calculation on which would benefit my DPS more: Imp.DT or MC?

If I understand your question, relative stat weightings for that build are given in the OP of the simulationcraft thread.

Warlock_T8_00_41_30 intellect=0.27 spirit=0.78 spell_power=1.32 hit_rating=2.14 crit_rating=0.70 haste_rating=1.01

But you really need to calculate them yourself based on your current stats.

My question to you fellow locks is glyphs for a Meta/Ruin build in 3.1 I have the current build of
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...4&version=9733

I currently don't know what to do for the 3rd glyph. I considered taking 2 points out of ISB and putting them into aftermath along with using the immolate glyph but I'd thought I'd get the groups opinion...

I assume based on the link these were run with the glyph configuration listed on the 3.1 thread? Have these been adjusted for the change in the immolate glyph? I am curious to see how immolate pans out against say Meta or COA glyphs since the bonus is only 10% (I guess I shouldn't say only but you get the idea).

These were lifted from the 3.1 thread so yes they had that glyph setup. Given the talent build has changed since I took a snap shot and is being kept up to date in the 3.1 simulation thread the answer is probably yes the changes are being tracked. The builds are still changing as the PTR changes and people experiment, as the glyphs get tested then base recommended builds and why they are recommended will be included.

One thing to note (as was pointed out to me) is that with the changes to the doomguard the benefit of using it in any demo build is not a good idea. Even in the demo/conflag build you lose too much over the imp from Master Demonology and Demonic Knowledge alone.

Running the most recent simcraft, in any of the given deep demo builds, the meta glyph was beating out the immolate glyph in all trials. Albeit it was only about 40 dps more, it is consistent.

The math for the meta glyph makes it seem a bit more powerful that originally noticed. 6 seconds extra out of the ~120 second cooldown is an extra 5% uptime. 5% of the 20% bonus is 1% more overall theoretically. However given that meta is often used in conjuction to heroism, potions and trinket procs if any, that 1% scales better, and in practice the current meta (which is theoretically a 30/180x.2 = ~ 3.3% overall damage increase if you disregard immolation) is actually a 5% or larger boost in 3 minute and under fights.*

*I have done heroic dummy tests with a shaman and ran it 3 minutes without vs with multiple times.

Here's an interesting idea;

It's been suggested before that drain soul is really, really close to shadow bolt damage for 0/56/15.
Previously I've already suggested to try and synchronise curse of doom casts with metamorphosis to get the 20% damage buff.
I'd like to suggest that, if patchwerk is below 25% and your Metamorphosis is about to expire, replace shadowbolt with drain soul. The result is (or should be) that the already very competitive in damage drain soul gets +20% damage until either you cancel it or it runs out.

It becomes slightly more complex when you need to refresh your dots after you start channeling, but that's a different story altogether anyway.