I myself, do not have a warlock. However my fiancee does and so for that reason I have done a fair bit of researching to gain a good amount of knowledge so I could further assist her in raids and help out! However there have been a few things that continously tangle me up due to researching multiple sources of info that have varied opinions. Before I post this though, know that I have read through a gruesome amount of pages on replies regarding this thead (Oh my Gosh, head 'bout to explode) but again, due to alot of intellectual conversatons regarding 'which might be beter for what' I have still unsucessfull on finding some -solid- answers.

So heres the actual question(s) and some Info:

Simple Stats:
Intel - 828
Spirit - 462
Haste - 212
Crit - 15.81
Spell (With Demonic Aegis) - 2040

Major Glyphs:
-CoA
-Imp
-Conflagerate

Current rotation:
---CoA, Immolate, Conflagerate, CB, Inc, Inc, Inc (LF if needed) <Set1>
---Repeat

1) Question - This is a solid rotation, no? Toss up CoA ad Immo for Molten Core proc. Since she has th Conflag Glyph we then Conflagerate to use the Backdraft proc in which is used by the CB and two incinerates. An extra Inc for a filler. Then repeat. This seems to work very well for the fact that this rotation (With current haste) cycles through and repfreshes CoA and Immo JUST as they are about to drop, allowing for a very high % uptime.

2) Question - Conerning the use of Incinerate vs. Soul Fire, from what I gather there is a certain point in haste rating to which using SF is a better use then using Incinerate for the fact that after <x amount of haste> Incinerate begins clipping the GCB, and that longer cast may benefit more from Backdraft Proc as well. However, but is this haste rating? 400? 500?

3) Question - Hit rating should not be this aggriviating to figure out *sighs* yet I have had an incredibly hard time determining exactly where a Blood Elf Destro Lock hit rating should be? Wowwiki states 368. The conflict between me and this answer is that I find alot of Warlock om WoW Armory that do not reach this hit-cap, but have fairly high reported DPS still?

You would help her the most if you would get HER to do the research. If you can get her to read the very first post of this thread (or the demo / aff / hit thread) it would be a start. More detailed questions can be found deeper, however this is all subject to change with 3.1 and if she starts reading up on that now, her performance than might get vastly better.

MEssage deleted

@Dusks:

Following answers are my opinion. If you need more in depth info, read more threads. Or better yet, get your wife to do it for herself. It's not like this isn't part of the fun, right If it wasn't, both you and I probably wouldn't be here. Anyways...

1. You want to cast Corruption. It still does its damage and remains important as it gives you much higher MC uptime.
2. Forget "rotation". That term just doesn't do the warlock justice anymore. See it this way:
There's an "opening" sequence of spells. This opening will determine initial offsets for your DoTs and cooldowns. Then, there's your spell priorities. Different specs have different priorities. For deep destruction, the list goes something like " Immolate, Conflagrate, Chaos Bolt, Agony, Corruption, Incinerate". If timers force you to choose between two spells, you'll want to cast high priority spells first, always.
This is why the opening is treated with such importance. In determines just how timers will flow, and eventually clash, later on in the casting sequence. With this in mind, my preferred opening is: "CoA, Corr, Immo, Conflag, CB".

It depends on raid setup and whether you're using hastepots or not. Now you can go the long way, pull up all the formulas and calculate this through. Alternatively you can just take a look at your tooltip during raid and see just what your cast times are in reality. If it dips below 1s, consider SF. In any case, if you do spam SF you should be carrying lots and lots and lots of shards and be prepared to never forget DSing the hell out of trashmobs after each boss attempt. Personally, I find the dps gain just isn't worth the effort. Constantly looking after and reloading shards all the time gets annoying really fast.

If you're specced 3/3 Cataclysm the highest hit percentage you will need from gear is 14%, which is 368 points. This is assuming no hit debuff in your raid. If you have a shadow priest providing misery for example, you'll be capped at 11% hit from gear. If you spec deep into destruction you actually can't get around 2/3 Cataclysm right now. So... how much hit you put on your gear really depends on your standard raid setup and how you want to spec the character.

I would have thought that CoElements would be a better curse to place on the mob than CoA. 10% damage across the board (plus the benefit to the raid) I believe outweighs the damage from CoA.

And if your main goal of CoA is to proc MC, you can achieve that (although not as effectively) with Corruption. So basically Corruption is a slightly less effective way of doing what you want CoA to do (proc MC + dmg), and then for 2 or 3 GCD you can keep CoElements on the boss for the whole fight.

I have tried this tactic, and have even used the Glyph of Corruption for the instant SB procs. Haven't worked out the numbers yet, but I'm sure it would at least compete.

The downside with my idea currently is that in a 25-man raid, usually there will be another lock - and in my guild most are Affliction so have the Imp CoElements making mine obsolete. In this case I use your CoA strat but have a wasted Glyph. As the ptr stands now though, CoElements will be 13% base, so that'll change things... of course MC will not be available to deep destro, so that really changes things. (But that's ptr speculation, so let's not go too far down that road).

CotE really isn't needed for most good 25 man raids because of Earth and Moon or Ebon Plague and even than the Affliction warlock would be putting up the mael'd CotE anyway.

And yes I see the Destro lock becoming the CotE user in the patch. With no MC we have no reason to CoA/Corr outside of a minimal (maybe) damage increase or if your in a movement situation (always be casting something). With that said could Destro lean back to Curse of Doom? I haven't really done the math on it, but my gut feeling says yes.

This was on MMO champion today, can anyone confirm that this is now in the destro tree? MMO-champion talent calculator does not say it is.
If it is destruction, im wondering, would the rotation <35% be something like this for 0/13/58....

immo -> incinerate -> conflag -> CB -> Soulfire -> (incinerate -> Soulfire) rotation as filler.

Also, do calculations show that CoA is still viable to use in a rotation without us having access to MC?

Could somebody clue me in on why deep destro builds are all dropping corruption from the rotation and going for Demonic Aegis instead of putting some points in affliction?

In the case of Aegis: for 3 points, you get 30% more effect, which is an increase of 54 spellpower + 3% of your spirit, so approximately 65-70 more spellpower than untalented fel armor (assuming raid buffs). Right? And the other talents are largely a waste from a purely DPS standpoint (aside from improved imp obviously). So assuming you are going to grab Improved Imp and Fel Synergy regardless, the remaining 8 points you put in demo effectively give you 65-70 spellpower and a DPS-negligible mana increase.

By contrast, if you go into affliction with those 8 extra points, you can get Improved CoA, 3-4 points in Improved Corruption, and 1-2 in Suppression (if needed), and Improved Lifetap. 3 points in Corruption leads to a damage increase in the mid-200s or higher depending on buffs/debuffs.

So in my case on a dummy with just Fel Armor and no debuffs, Corruption would be running 3800 damage per cast. I know incinerate can crit, but its non-crit damage is not that high (about 2900 on the same dummy with only immolate and fel armor for buffs/debuffs), and it takes longer to cast. Is there math somewhere suggesting a crit-rate at which it's not worth it to use Corruption anymore?

Well right now the only reason destro locks cast corruption afaik is to proc the t7 2set bonus and molten core. Molten core is going away in to the demo tree next patch and once you swap out your t7 I don't see any reason to keep casting it. Destro is all about the fire.

Its an extra 9% of spirit to spell power not 3%.

Corruption and CoA both have good DPCT which is why I put them up for any decent length fights. Their proccing 2pT7 is a bonus. I doubt I'd drop Corruption for any mob that'd take more than 20 second to down regardless of what they do to the talent trees because of the DPCT.

CotE vs CoA. As it stands, I'm reasonably certain that they are competitive for a Destro lock. I no longer have qualms about swapping them if I'm the only one who can put up the debuff as it seems a fairly neutral change to my DPS in my experience.

The Demonic Aegis talent appears to increase SP by about 4-5%. So you're going to have to look at your DPS breakdown to determine if your Corruption and CoA make up more than half (real number is probably closer to a third) of your DPS before you can give Demonic Aegis the flick.


@ Lockstep:
Sorry to be a bother, but what sort of change has 3.1 been to your DPS. I look at that number and have no idea if it's up or down. I'd have to further ask if you have changed your rotation to accomodate the 3.1 changes.