Nnayr

If your healers are having trouble there, find new healers. The only fight where dp is better than lifetap is probably Loatheb, other than that you should be able to lifetap whenever. Darkpact IS a wasted talent point.

 

Issa

Haven't done calculations on it yet, but I suggest that if you use it in a standard rotation, you pop it just before you refresh your dots. They will benefit more from it than your sb will.

 

krilz

The problem is fitting it into your rotation. I have somewhat solved the problem (at least for me). I use an addon called ScrollingCombatText and whenever I hit 30-40% mana it says "Low mana!" and makes a sound which is a queue for me to Life Tap. And if I cast spells all the time and refresh DOTs and whatnot it will come almost every 10 seconds which makes it real solid.

 

Naforce

I honestly haven't found a good use of the 4t7bonus (unless it actually is all the besti-in-slot's you have). You loose a GCD everytime you Life Tap. Is it worth it? I'm not sure. You always want the boss to die just as you go OOM. Anything else is a failure if you have been Life Tapping. Think about it. 1 GCD is almost a SB. A SB crit is like what, 10k damage? Does the 300 added spirit really give you that amount of damage? I don't think so.
Though if you Life Tap just enough so that you end the fight OOM, then you've maximized your performance by Life Tapping before a new rotation, but really consider the problem with Life Tapping too much.

 

krilz

Totally agree. That's why I keep my mana around 30-40% through-out most of the fight until the boss reaches 10% or so, then I cut out Life Tap of the loop to maximize Drain Soul uptime.

 

bambatsa

Actually 1 GCD is not 1 SB is a bit more than half. So 2 life taps in 2 cycles will increase all the damage done by your dots by 90 or 120 (if you have imp fel armor) for those 2 cycles.I think this overcaps the 10k possible crit from a SB.
As i said i haven't done the math behind this but looks to me that it might increase the overall dps.
I agree that you should normaly end a fight with no mana but if gaining mana buffs your spell power and you don't spoill your timing with refreshing your dots then it might be usefull. Would love to have someone analyze this as i am not very good at math.

 

Anthraxx

To change the subject a bit...

What do you think about my target affliction pre-Ulduar gear?

80 Undead Warlock

263 hit rating for Horde toon just to get over 10% (boomkin/sp + 3/3 Suppression + 3/3 Cataclysm).
2 x T7 only (see Value of T7 thread).

Hot or not?

 

Affe

You need 17% hit in total to cap. Or do you intentially not cap?

 

Anthraxx

Out of 17% miss rate on a lvl 83 (skull) mob via hit rating you can only mitigate 16%.

Max hit chance on a boss is always 99%.

 

Issa

SP and Boomkin don't stack.

 

Affe

Pretty sure they changed that in WotLK. Try reading Spell Hit Discussion

 

Smurrf

There is no pretty sure. It was changed. 17% hit is the cap now, not 16%, and max hit chance is now 100%.

 

Anthraxx

I never claimed they do, maybe it was just poorly written. Fixed now.

I don't see any explicit proofs this was changed in WotLK... OP stated that 17% is a cap.

Show me a Naxx clear WWS log for a 17% hit caster and ZERO misses and I'll believe you

 

Issa

I thought you did because you said you were hitcapped. I now realise you think there is still a 1% misschance.

 

Tinava

Not a naxx clear (since we're finishing it tonight) and you can clearly see from my char sheet I'm not hitcapped. But when you throw in the 3% hit from Spriest and 1% from draenei, I'm capped in raid for destro.

Wow Web Stats
Wow Web Stats
Wow Web Stats

All three are from the same night. On the last, you can see I'm not capped on affliction, but on destro definitely.

 

Thondil

You can cap to 100% now.
I guess some Blue posted it or it was in some patchnotes, but I can't find it atm. Wowwiki.com says it's capped at 100% though.

As for the WWS: You will rarely see a warlock with 17% hit, since most people have Raid(de)buffs of at least 3% hit. But if you only look at bosses like Patchwerk, Sapphiron or Loatheb, you will see no misses since they nearly have 100% uptime of the 3% hit debuff and in this case (alliance) the 1% from the Draenei aura:
Wow Web Stats

 

Smurrf

Since WoWWiki, Ej, and several other sources all operate under the principal of 17% hit for casters, I believe the onus is on you to prove that the miss is still there. Get geared for 17% hit (not counting other player buffs, just yourself...this way it makes sure that there's no gap by other player death), and show us that the miss chance is still there. You can even test it yourself in any major old-world city. on the heroic test dummies. It's accepted fact on these boards, though, that 17% is the cap, not 16%. If this board is wrong, prove it. It'd be useful information.

 

Thondil

In my experience, affliction works better than most direct damage specs under high latency circumstances.

Latency increases the time between actions, which reduces the number of actions you can perform in a given timeframe. Since Affliction has a lot of "high damage per action"-spells (DoTs) and Shadowbolt as a "low damage per action"-filler, we can reduce the number of shadowbolts cast while trying to maintain the number of DoTs cast. Of course it's impossible to maintain the DoT uptime at normal levels, but it still reduces the number of filler-actions.

Most other classes/specs have few "high damage per action"-abilities and more spammable "medium damage per action"-abilities. This makes them suffer more from latency since they can't replace any "low damage per action"-abilities.

 

• Heeno

Affliction suffers much more than most specs because we rely on timing more than other specs. Take DS post-25%, you have to react to the drain soul tick and recast something else. This can be quite annoying with high latency.

 

Envý

I have written a small addon that simply gives a raidwarning when DS ticks.
Maybe it's usefull for people who don't really want to use SCTD just for DS

DrainSoulTimer : WoWInterface Downloads : Warlock

 

cryp71c

DPS Question:

In a 10-man VoA (with no duplication of class, so no CoE) w/ an Imp out my DPS was 2.2k, but in other fights (such as 10-man Saph) My DPS averages only around 1800, and sometimes that's w/ another lock having CoE on target.

Is Archavon just really lacking in stats (or perhaps does he have some weakness to shadow), or is there some explanation as to the drastic difference in DPS?

 

Thondil

I don't think so, especially not in your example.
You would apply dots and then start casting Drain Soul, which channels for quite some time. Since the tick frequency isn't affected by latency, you won't lose any more time as soon as it's channeling. Therefore it probably is the highest "damage per action"-spell available, which makes affliction even better below 25%.
Of course dot uptime will suffer, especially since I would be channeling Drain Soul somewhat longer than without high latency, because it just ticks away without requiring a new action.

edit: and at least on my realm, latency is not consistent and predictable. I can't say "my last cast went off 3.4 secs after I pushed the button, so I can cast the next DoT 3 secs before it expires". That's why I think channeling Drain Soul a bit longer and risk letting DoTs fall off for some seconds would be worth it.

 

hisaku

Got a screen shot by any chance?

 

• Heeno

Actually in fact, all of your DoTs (even immolate) have a higher DPCT than drain soul post-25%. So you must try and achieve maximum DoT uptime even under 25%. To do this you have to try to cut off your drain soul channel immediately after it ticks since it only ticks once every 3 seconds without haste. My issue with latency and drain soul is that I have two indicators in my UI for when drain soul ticks (MSBT, kgpanels), and I must react and time when I cut my drain soul off, which is significantly hurt by latency.

So basically here is what normally happens: Drain Soul ticks, then add reaction time, then add latency. This is especially bad when its unpredictable latency which can hurt timing.

 

Lominen

I can really recommend adding a sound to your DS ticks. That helped me a lot. Especially since I use MSBT as well and its just annoying when it sums two ticks into one line, then you just know you lost way too much :P