First, Namnalia, Thank you. Your thread is the best I’ve ever seen for any class. I’ve read all the posts and your updated hit talents vs hit equipment section, but I’m hoping we can come to something more definitive.

Let’s simplify our discussion to ISB and Naxx starter gear. ISB seems to be the best candidate to steal points from to increase +hit talents. From the math section, each point in ISB increases SB damage by 1.25% based on a crit of 28%. What does this value convert to for overall DPS? For instance, 10 Hit Rating = 10.61dps, 10 spell power = 11.33dps, so 1 ISB = <constant> * <crit chance> (assuming Namnalia’s 3 shadowbolt assumption for ISB proc).

If someone could do the math to provide the missing constant, it would give a clearer idea of when to begin adding points to ISB and reducing suppression and cataclysm. For instance, currently I use some +hit gems to get hit capped, but I have 4 points in ISB and only 1 each in supp/cat. My gut is telling me that I should reduce my ISB and use +sp gems instead, but I’d love to have something more concrete than my gut telling me to do this.

A few quick other points/questions..

1. Is 14% +hit the goal, and hope/assume the other 3% will come from the raid (and have +hit gear ready to swap as needed) or is 17% ideal?
2. Why do some of the sample builds have 3 in Eradication when the guide indicates 1 is mandatory, 2 is ok, 3 is mostly a waste? For instance, the “both hit talents & DP” build should move 2 Eradication points to Molten Core, shouldn’t it?
3. I’ve had a fair amount of problems with threat, especially vs bosses like Heigan. Are others facing this, or do my tanks suck? Should Improved Drain Soul be looked at again, as something more useful than Fel Concentration?
4. Namnalia, you might want a small section on changes from BC to Wrath. I fear there are many warlocks ignoring their spellstone, thinking it’s the same as BC days...

[edited for grammar]

I never run into aggro issues, even on fights like Heigan, or Gluth where the tank goes in and then move the boss toward the door. If worried, just put 1 point into Improved Drain Soul, should be more then enough to provide some threat reduction.

Starting with the assumption you should be hit capped on your own, as shadowpriest may die, or the boomkin might have left out IFF (and then you can safely spank him 17% would be a "play it safe" bet...I normally tend to run with 15% spellhit from gear and 2% from talents, but in my case I can use [Leggings of Atrophy] instead of my t7 leggings or the hit trinket from VH HC if i'm in dire need.

Also one question: why put points into MC when most of the times we're using either the felhunter or doomguard/infernal ? Isn't it better to move those points out ? Is the increase in immolate dmg worth it ?

Hey, Rhad, good few question here, I'm going to duck the ISB question and answer your quick questions.

1. 14% is the goal for horde 13% for alliance assuming you have a drenei in your group.

2. Eradication is a low dps increase when you get that deep into it but it is a dps increase none the less. and there by you take it, though some people would say you could put 1 pt in MC or potentially another place here or there.

3. Threat is an issue, fights like 3 drake sarth where you mix in aoe with little to no aggro time for the tanks, and 4 individual dps race bosses, there simply isn't enough soul shatter out there. Another fight like malygos is an issue because of A) our dots are always ticking, and B) locks avoid the vortex with teleport, it's not just you.

4. People ingoring spellstones these days, well, I feel no sympathy for them, patchnotes exist for a reason, and I hope people reading these forums are people who read major class changing patchnotes.


Ok, so On that ISB question here's the thing, affliction takes a large portion of it's damage from destruction, as well as from affliction tree clearly. The problem is we have hit talents for both trees and getting both is nearly impossible missing either 1 shadowbolt or any single curse/dot is a major dps loss for an affliction lock, there by getting hit talents in one tree is a very poor idea because you need to be hit capped for both. The caveat here is with gear, if you simply can't get to 13/14% hit (depending on faction) then taking the affliction hit talents over say, fel conc, isn't a bad thing, but it's generally better to hit cap with gear, and there by take ISB.

edit-

One of the problems with being the highest dps class in game is having the highest TPS just by the standard of our dps, then you add in all our extra threat gen, be it from fel armor, from initial dot landing (very small number but it adds up) and healing threat from our heals like SL and Haunt, and our mana regen threat from LT (.5 threat per mana). What this means is we have higher TPS than dps

Sadly, this wouldn't be a bad idea. I've come across more than a couple raiding warlocks not using stones since they like wands better and asking how I made a doomguard.

See, I'm having issues with my DS. Am i supposed to be reapplying dots and using DS as a filler or just straight DS? I feel like I'm doing it wrong. I just can't seem to get any higher than 6050.

Currently, I have not been able to test out DST in any raids, I was just recently informed that you have to be fighting a mob with more than 150K HP. I think the concept that it allows raid message to be sent out so every member will know when the bosses life has reached 25% is a good thing for the whole group. Our guild always BL's between 25-30% anyways and Drain Soul makes a Affliction locks damage increase by large numbers,(For me it seems to be almost 2x the normal amount atleast). Which if you where wanting to avoid another addon then just time your DS's on the BL's.

Another addon I will be trying at the same time is going to be Drain Soul Warning.(This is the link to it, Drain Soul Warning. If you want to try this you have to rename the folder to just ExecuteWarning because there can not be spaces.) This addon is suppose to give you a new window that shows the target and it's health percentage. When it gets to 25% it will blink red and flash a message across your screen alerting you to the event.

I still believe that DST is the best choice (based upon its description) since I have always been a firm believer in doing what's best for the progression and not always what's best for just myself. I will be posting more feedback on both of these so it will hopefully help anyone else out with these same issues while raiding.

---RedneckEmperor20---

Extract it to a folder named DrainSoulTimer.

The problem I face is that I can easily get hit capped, but only by wearing some inferior DPS gear and/or using +hit gems instead of +spell power gems. What I'm seeking is a formula that gives a value as to how much each ISB talent point is worth (in relation to my crit), as compared to DPS. I can then make an informed decision on when it makes sense to increase my ISB and decrease my supp & cataclysm.

We all agree that ideally supp & cat are 0 and we have top DPS gear that just happens to also provide us with our hit cap, but what do we do till that magic moment happens?

This thread has been a great help to me, helped me with my current spec although I may still need to change it. I find the rotation the hardest though

Currently i'm using Haunt, UA, Immo, Corr, CoA, SB, SB and then renew but only do Haunt, UA and immo. Its rather easy to keep on top of and dps is alright with it

I disagree that aiming for 14% hit from gear alone is a desirable goal. No matter how you slice it, to reach that goal you will have to reduce your overall dps by gemming for hit, or filling gear slots with sub par dps pieces. The talent points you save from obtaining all that +hit isn't that great either. Early Affliction has virtually no place to spend those 3 talent points you saved from spec'ing out of Suppression. Push back protection for Drain Soul is a minuscule dps increase at best, if at all. In Destruction the only thing worth spending those points in is Molten Core, which isn't bad. But most people already have at least 1 point in it without getting 14% hit, and the uptime you get for that 1 point is pretty good to begin with.

I've found the sweet spot to be 12% hit from gear personally. I have everything I need to pick up in Affliction as well as maxed out ISB and 1 point in Molten Core in Destruction.

Hi Everyone,

I need a little advice as to how to up my dps, we did naxx last night and although I managed to be first on the charts on patchwerk; I am still curious as to how other warlocks are managing to do 7k dps on that fight (I did about 6.1-.6.3k with doomguard.

My rotation is as follows:

SB --> Haunt --> UA --> Corruption --> COA --> Siphon Life --> Refresh Haunt --> SB --> refresh dots while keeping haunt up.

I also seem to fall into the problem of COA ending about 3 seconds before Siphon Life does with nothing to left to refresh after putting up COA, so I end up throwing another sbolt out (2.2 sec cast) and not getting the ideal dot time on Siphon Life. So I'm wondering if it's my rotation or something else.

As for my pet, he was raid buffed and food buffed with all special attacks off.

Here's the wws:

Wow Web Stats

Here's my armory link:

The World of Warcraft Armory

Thanks!

I'm not sure if you were agreeing with me or disagreeing with me by the wording of your post.

Could you break down how you got to 2450 sp with your 13% hit setup? I'm not doubting you, I just came up with a different total looking at your armory. I'm guessing that you're including the 200 sp increase from IotDs. To give some comparison numbers I have:

- 2005 sp totally unbuffed.
- 2389 w/Fel armor + Fel hunter [2589 counting IotDs]

You're pretty decently geared but my gearing choices seem to give me ~105 or so more spell power and ~6% more haste, which is better imo than the 2 extra points in Eradication and 3/3 Fel Concentration you get from gearing for extra +hit. Fel concentration is debateably a near zero dps increase in most situations because all it does is lower the overall channeling duration of DS. (Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken about this one) And since you almost never let DS completely finishing channeling (due to always having to clip it to refresh dots), getting a reduction in overall channeling time is moot because you were going to clip it before it was finished anyway. 3/3 Eradication is ok, but as we all know it suffers from diminishing returns past the first point invested. We have one Warlock in our raids with 3/3 and according to our WWS he almost never gets more procs during a boss fight than I do with my 1 talent point investment. Sometimes he'll get 1 extra one over me but it's uncommon due to the short nature of most fight and the 30 second internal cd. Perhaps you've had different luck with that one though.

I "rotate" a bit differently: Haunt, UA, Immo, CoA, Corr, SL then bolt and Haunt again.

Siphon Life, Drain Life, Life Tap, and Haunt's healing portion do not generate threat for the warlock. At least, life draining effects and Life Tap didn't until the end of BC, if I remember correctly. Also, while Curses do generate a small amount of threat on application, I think DoTs in general do not. Has anyone tested this recently?

Now, after the 3.0.8 patch, the boss pet is doomguard and what's the "permanently" pet for use, imp or felhunter?

And UA glyph is most worth to use instead CoA?

Life tap does generate threat and so does the healing ticks from fel armor. You can test it on trash in naxx for example spider quarter with small spider groups. Let your tank pull them by just hitting one, get close enough to enter combat, use life tap. 4-5k instant mana should show you many "High threat" warnings or even "Attacking you".

Also see here: http://elitistjerks.com/1052562-post563.html

Hello guys!

First of all, i want to thank everybody for this great thread, especially thanks a lot Namnalia.

I just have one question.

Wouldn't it be better to change Head and Legs against the T7-pieces to get the 4 piece bonus?
Furthermore, change boots against [Boots of Impetuous Ideals], Gloves of the fallen Wizzard --> [Gloves of Grandeur] to get enough hit rate.

Or is the bonus not good enough?

@ justkidding

The 4 pc t7 bonus for an affliction lock is not that great imho, considering the need to life tap is a lot less than say destro specs, thus reducing it's effective utility.

Plus actually for me mana is rarely an issue, so you have to theorycraft how much dps you would gain (should be 20/30ish dps for each t7 item) and how much you will loose by swapping out those legs and head.

as far as I know, the head is the best in game for affli locks and surpass the t7 head by far, and the leggings with that hit are a pretty good choice over t7 leggings which lacks hit.

There is a thread about the value of 4 t7,5. from reading this I personally believe 2 piece setbonus is worth it while 4 isnt.

Any hit point above 446 is a wasted stat. The gear setup i created was optimized to reach 14% hit from gear. The missing 3 % will in this case be filled with either talents or raidbuffs.

I agree with you on most things, but we're not the higest dps class in game at the moment. Mages, Arcane mages to be precise, surpass us by an average of 1000dps on a stand-still fight e.g. Patchwerk and surpass us by a much higher margin on fights where movement is imperative.

Dps on Patchwerk in my guild:
Me: about 6k dps
My best mage: about 6.8k dps

I figured that if you are specd into 3/3 suppresion and 3/3 cataclysm and are always in a raid setting with the 4% this would be the best gear set-up: chardev.org - a World of Warcraft Character Planner - x

u see... now its getting interesting and we might be able o actually get some numbers that could support an answer to the question.

Hitcapped through gear or talents?

If we would accept your setup as the best one and come up with a total dps from that gear we can then create a setup where we reach the same hitchance witout talents.

If your gearsetup generates lets say 5k dps and the best gearsetup without hittalents does 4,8k dps we have a difference of 200dps.... so the last question to ask is if can we gain more than 200dps from thoose extra 6 talentpoints from for example, fel consentration, IDS, molten core, ISB or pet talent.

This ofc depends on that we have 2 gearsetups to compare with eachother that are generally accepted as the best gearsetups.

The numbers above is ofc just a made up as an example to show the usufullnes of such numbers. However... i do think that we should start with the situation where we have to reach 368 hit instead of the lowest.