I'm going to be leveling a warlock to 80 that I got to 60 during a mass refer a friend leveling craze and I had a quick question about Suppression. First post says that Soul Leech is relatively bad for the points invested; my question is whether or not Soul Leech is less bad than Suppression could have some benefits in that you have 3% hit for your Affliction and Destruction spells so you don't have to worry about loss of uptime for Molten Core.

I was thinking of something like this: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft which is basically the cookie cutter deep destruction build that drops Soul Leech for Suppression.

I would look at the points you put into Fire & Brimstone. With 1990 spell power and 660 spirit unbuffed, I calculate 2820 buffed spell power or so (Fel Armor, Totem of Wrath, Divine Spirit, and Kings). That's a bonus of +423 damage to Immolate for 5 points. From my math on Conflag damage (not shown, assumed 2.06 multiplier) and a 2600 average Conflag non-crit hit, I get +689 damage per Conflag.

I do not know how Immolate splits up the bonus damage to Immolate in terms of a DD contribution and DoT contribution, which is important since we lose a tick of Immolate.

Assuming (big assume here, no data to back this up) a 50/50 distribution of the 423 damage, that's +380 damage after losing a tick to Conflag, for a total of +1070 damage per Immo/Conflag rotation (this number changes based on your spell power and buffs, major factors are character sheet spell power and average Conflag non-crit damage). That comes out to +214 damage per point.

Let's say you put Immo up right after Conflag, and Conflag at about 13.5 seconds after Immo lands. That's a 16.5 second cycle, modified by haste and backdraft. With a decent haste rating and the 3.0.8 PTR changes, we could easily say that's under 16 seconds, possible 15.6-15.8.

Calculating the added damage over a period of 15.7 seconds, that's ~14 DPS per point, for about 70 total DPS from Fire & Brimstone.

Given a 4300 DPS on Patchwerk baseline, that's 1.6% DPS total, or 0.32% DPS per point.

Certainly not a very high performing talent, I would max Imp. Soul Leech AND Empowered Imp over F&B any day.

Edit: Looking at the discussion, you can also see that someone pointed out your points in Imp. CoA are worth ~28 DPS (I get this calculation too: 10% of 81,000 CoA damage over 5 minutes, that's 8100/300 DPS total and approximately 14 DPS per point).

So we have a situation where both Imp. CoA and F&B are worth about the same DPS. I would wager to bet that Imp. SL and EI are more DPS than both talents per point. No math to back that up yet though.

Suppression isn't really worth it since you only have one spell that will use it. As for Soul Leech: Imp. SL is very good but if you're not going all the way down to it, then forgot about "regular" SL. Why is Imp. SL so good? Because it keeps your pet going indefinately and reduces the amount of Life Tap you do. (thought I'd mention it for clarity)

Very interesting. Unfortunately, I am pressed for time but I did want to point one thing out. My Conflag crit chance on Patchwerk is 67%. The spell also says that the critical hit chance is increased by 25%, if fully talented. Also, my immolate accounted for 8% of my total damage done that fight. While this seems very necessary for any incinerate rotation because you will need to cast this to increase your incinerate damage. I rarely run with other warlocks in raid so I can't depend on their immolate nor would I want to if they were there every raid. I did start by taking 1 point out of imp CoA to give me 2/2 ISL and 2/3 EI. I do not have any wws from last night but I am going to start pulling my logs and doing my own wws. I am thinking of dropping the other point out of Imp coa to go full 0/13/58. I will have WWS to post on the changes on Sunday night.

Threat is not an issue if your tank knows what he's doing. And hit capping affliction spells as demo or destro is not worth sacrificing other stats for. So no one wants to go beyond 289 hit rating, or 263 if you are alliance and can count on being grouped with a draenei. This is assuming you have a boomkin or a shadow priest in your raid, of course.

After hit capping destro, order of importance goes: Spell power > Haste > Crit > Spirit > Int > Hit.

Interesting...so crit is third in importance. With haste being where it is on your list, if a warlock is hit capped, and they have decent spell power, would you suggest gemming for haste at this point?

Always gem for pure spell power, unless there's a good socket bonus to be had. But yes, the best gem for a yellow socket is the orange one with haste.

I have to agree that crit is pretty low on the list right now. I would always take haste over crit.

[Veiled Monarch Topaz] -> [Reckless Monarch Topaz]

I would almost even say Spi > Crit but I don't think those itemization options exist on any current gear.

I can agree that spell power is Prime for locks, but I'm undecided for haste > crit. Assuming hit is capped, you guys are saying crit is not as good because of the amount it takes to get 1% crit?

I know that fire destro don't rely on crits to keep a debuff up like ISB, but still, is there anyone that can clearly and logically explain to me why haste is so much better than crit for a 2/13/56 build for instance?

It's pretty simple: 1% crit means 1% extra dps (assuming ruin), and 1% haste also means 1% extra dps. But for 1% crit you need about 46 crit rating, while for 1% haste you need about 33 haste rating. So obviously, 1 haste rating is significantly more worth than 1 crit rating.

This isn't really true. DPS stats scale with eachother and not with themselves at all. In other words, the value of haste increases when the value of all your other stats increases (spell power, crit, hit) but not at all when your haste rating increases. So actually, haste rating has zero effect on how much of a DPS boost you get from Heroism or Haste Pots. Crit on the other hand, will make these items more valuable.

For example:

Say you do 1000DPS without haste.
You then get Heroism, which increases your DPS by 30% to 1300DPS.
Heroism was worth a 300DPS boost.

Now let's say you have 10% haste on your gear, so you do 1100DPS without Heroism.
With Heroism you have 40% haste, giving a DPS value of 1400DPS while under the effects of Heroism.
Heroism was still worth the exact same 300DPS increase.

Now say you add 10% crit, so your unhasted DPS is 1100 DPS (let's just assume a simple SB spam model with Ruin for simplicity of numbers).
Under Heroism, you now do 1430DPS.
So now, with additional crit, you are getting a 330DPS boost from Heroism, up by 10% from a 300DPS boost.