Uderhart

Might it be because of the Glyph of Corruption ? Just wondering.

 

Tinava

That depends on your raid environment, and who else is running in said raid. In my opinion, CoA is the better dot to have (along with the glyph) for MC uptime (as you stated, longer and ticks more often). However, if you've got a raid without Imp Faerie Fire, one lock will be using CoE. With a 31/40 build, that lock is the likely one to use CoE, as they don't have any talents that improve CoA or Corr, and thus, you'd be using Corr in your rotation for MC uptime.

 

• dragon12

I think you mean Earth&Moon or the DK equivalent rather than Imp FF.

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

 

duhwhat

Imp FF takes the place of Curse of Recklessness. The effect of max rank untalented FF is the same armor reduction as CoR and does not stack, but has no AP bonus to the target, and the Improved version is going to have to be up 100% anyway for hit.

 

Tinava

I am always confusing those two. <headdesk>

 

turturin

I don't mean to belabor the point too much, but I think you may have missed mine. I didn't have a problem with your statements saying hit was still the cheapest, especially given that (as you note) the spreadsheets don't prove or disprove that at the moment.

My point was strictly about your comment on hard hit capping for soulshatter. I really think you're ignoring how overpowered tank threat is at the moment. Even without any threat reduction talents, no one should ever catch a tank on any fight we've currently seen (naxx, sanctum, eye, etc).

Many people are still arguing for hit-capping. I don't see anyone (except you) really arguing that the reason is for soul shatter. That is what i meant by your statement not being reflective of the current thinking of the warlock community.

On to other points:
On the discussion of 0/41/30 vs 0/31/40, my thinking is that the former will be better at lower gear levels where the crit boost from talents adds more to dps considering the low levels of crit on gear. I would expect SnF will outscale that at some point as a) spellpower gets higher and higher, and b) crit on gear becomes greater (diminishing the relative value of crit from talents.

On the question of putting a point or two in fel synergy, I think there's an argument to be made, but ultimately I seem to run across one of two situations in raids atm:
1. My felguard takes minimal dmg which is easily healed by VE/JoL and/or random AoE "smart heals".
2. My FG dies because of massive dmg that fel synergy would not have healed through (e.g. sapphiron), or he takes avoidable dmg that I didn't manage around (i.e. I played badly)
So no, I don't think any tradeoff of crit into fel synergy is worth it for PvE raiding.

 

Foretold

Sorry, it was added. Move along.

 

Splot

I've changed the wording, but I think you are over reading my intent. As far as I can see with soulshatter at the moment is more likely to be used on an AoE situation where not everything is gathered up and receiving enough threat quickly. Please correct me if I've read this incorrectly.

edit:
Would it be possible to get some contribution on when and where people are using soulshatter? WWS with a narative of what occurred would be most useful.

 

Trickykid

Most AoE is going to be with mobs less than level 83, correct? So you'll be capped already.

 

CrazyScot

The only time I (and I'm sure a few others) have been forced into using Soulshatter so far has been on Malygos, even this was due to the fact that on the attempts where I popped it I wasn't getting Vigilance but had a continual % damage buff from the power sparks, with tanks pushing upwards of 4k TPS on most bosses I don't see any issues in using soulshatter at all; using it as a reason to be hit capped again I find to be flawed thought, but I do believe the hit cap is something everyone should be aiming for as it does provide a large DPS loss if a "miss" chain occurs however rare it may occur.

*edit*
I also used Soulshatter once on KT during an aggro reset, I died to his frostbolt anyway which kind of made it entirely pointless but I feel it should perhaps be worth remembering that some bosses do have an aggro reset which may force a SS to be used.

 

Warlocomotif

Does anyone have any good formulas on calculating the damage your felguard will do with his melee swings/cleaves?

From what I gather, relavant info is:

Attack damage:
Felguard weapon dmg
Ferocious inspiration
Blood Frenzy/blood Poisoning
Felguard AP (after buffs)
Target Armor (after debuffs)

Attack speed:
Base Speed: 2s
Imp Moonkin/Swift retribution
Imp Icy Talons/Windfury

Attack Crit chance:
Leader of the pack/Rampage
BoKings(?)
Heart of the crusader/Master posoner/Totem of wrath

Haste should be 23%, making it 2*(1/1.23)=1.63s per swing. Shouldnt effect or be effected by cleave.
Crit chance should simply be 5%(Base agi)+5%(LotP)+8%(HotC), kings might have an effect by boosting agi.

Attack damage however I have no idea on how to calculate that, any formula or such would be awesome.

 

Mageborn

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't boss hit changed to 9% at 80?

Thus, level 83 mobs require 236 hit rating.

 

• dragon12

No. You have a base 17% resist chance against a boss-level mob.

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

 

Maalakai

Until the other Warlocks in my guild start getting the gear to match or exceed my spell damage, I've decided to be the dedicated Demonic Pact guy for our raids (also helps that I'm an Officer and I'm in for every single raid). We'd use an Elemental Shaman, but their personal dps is just garbage right now compared to a deep Demonology build, our buff scales with gear, and Enhancement is so good right now.

My questions:

1)- About how much crit does my pet need to have in order to ensure that Demonic Pact is up 100% (or near 100%) of the time?

2)- Lash of Pain is still considered a Shadow spell right? If so, wouldn't a Succubus be the better choice for a Demonic Pact build over a Felguard given that Lash will benefit from Improved Scorch/Winter's Chill debuff and also from it's own Master Demonologist buff? This is contingent, of course, on whether or not the 15% more crit for an ability used every 6 seconds is needed to keep the Demonic Pact buff going full time.

Here's the build I'm looking at using:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Personal DPS isn't my biggest concern and will probably wind up spamming +19 damage gems in all of my gear and swap some pieces around to get the most spell damage I can possibly muster. I did almost 5k dps on Patchwerk with a 0/53/18 build this week, so it's certainly a capable build even for personal dps.

 

Reuben

I've seen a few people asking for input on cast sequences and wanted to throw in my five cents.

I'm using the fel/emberstorm build with some really good results for not being a felguard fan. Basically I want to reitterate that maximizing your casts around gcd's is the key to high dps here and pretty much with any build. I found that if you start off with Immolate > coa or cor (whichever you use) you can then hit Demonic Empowerment + trinket during the gcd of your instant and immediately get into your incinerate spam without missing a beat.

In short i'm recommending using an instant cast after immolate or a cast with a spell time because you gain precious time to hit either your trinket or empowerment w/o wasting a gcd.

 

Ewinessa

Don't have much of an idea on how much is needed but I really doubt it would be much. At 30% master crit, pet has an extra 9% crit with IDT + 10% from DT + ~5% base. That would be ~24% crit w/o buffs, add 5% melee crit buff + 3% crit debuff and that would put the pet at 32% crit chance (don't think I'm missing any other melee crit buff/debuff.) With WF/Icy Talons, pet auto attack speed is constantly around 1.68 iirc.

That would give any pet 7.14 chances at a 32% crit rate to renew Demonic Pact, add 2 extra attacks from 6 second abilities and that would give you 9.14 chances with 32% chance to renew the buff in 12 seconds. Overwhelmingly bad RNG would be the only reason it would be off at that point.

 

Statious

My understanding was that demonic pact only procced on cleave and not normal white swings. I could be wrong and should go test it out, but that was my understanding. Has anyone been able to confirm that it is on white swings as well?

 

Sydane

Demonic Pact most definitely procs on any crit. During 3.0 raiding, in a fight where my pet could stay on target at all times, Demonic Pact rarely dropped off more than once even with as low as a 24% crit rate during the attempt. Most attempts once it was up, it stayed up the entire time (as in, wws would only show one gain). Post 3.0 I've been raiding with an elemental shaman, so I don't have any wws to indicate that is the same, but I see no reason it would have changed. Basically in any raid environment your Felguard is always going to have enough crit to have essentially 100% uptime, assuming you have 100% time on the boss. There are of course plenty of T7 fights where that isn't exactly possible, and as Totem of Wrath is generally higher at current gear levels and entirely reliable, still the most recommended spellpower buff. Totem of Wrath also adds to healing whereas Demonic Pact does not.

Demonic Empathy is the skill that procs only on cleave and thus is effectively useless.

Empathy does not imply approval.

 

Ewinessa

Do you have any way to prove this? Afaik, spellpower and healing are one and the same now, and since DP directly increases spellpower, then it would affect healing just as well. Might be wrong, but that's how I understand it.

 

Sydane

Lots of things still affect just one or the other, the only thing that is unified is gear. That goes for spellpower, crit, and all those stats. Gear is unified, many talents are specific. It may not always be obvious, but in this case it's easy to tell, simply look at your character screen when you have either buff.

Empathy does not imply approval.

 

Trickykid

From wowhead: "Demonic Pact increases spell power by 10% of your Spell Damage for 12 sec". That sounds like it'd increase the spell power stat, not just damage.

 

Ewinessa

Demonic Pact definitely increases the spellpower value in the character screen, which is what lead me to believe that it does affect healing.

 

Xavar

I think how you start is how you want your timers to work. If you go CoA, Corr, Immo, Icin x X, then your first Corr and your first Immo expire at the same time. If you continue to then cast Corr and Immo in the same order, that will always be the case, but you will have some slight down time every 18 seconds where you only have CoA running. If Corr goes first, you can get a rotation where you almost always have at least two dots running. Essentially then, incinerate becomes our "filler" spell, which also mascarades as our primary damage source.

Personally, I am torn on this. I would need to work out the math, but as our crit rises, it might be superior dps to just run a full set of dots inside and immolate and only refresh our two dots outside of immolate up time. I think I need to see some numbers on this.

 

Jaradakar

Seems to me if you don't have a Imp Faerie Fire in the raid but have multiple warlocks that it should be Affliction Lock that does CoE as they have the Malediction bonus of 3% (13% total) would be the most raid efficient (Vs a 0/41/30 or 0/31/40 building just putting up a 10% buff).

 

Akj

You are thinking of Demonic Empathy.