The benefits of Naxx25 and Malygos gear are far too compelling compared to 4xT7. I use the T7 shoulders and gloves because I tested and found my DPS better due to the 2 piece bonus, but I given the stats of 4xT7 no matter what combo compared to my gear, I can't see 4xT7 being superior to any warlock who has had a decent share of Naxx25 drops.

My gear:
Head: Faerlina's Madness
Neck: Chain of Latent Energies
Shoulder: Valorous
Back: Cape of the Unworthy Wizard
Chest: Heigan's Putrid Vestments
Wrists: Punctilious Bindings
Main Hand: Grieving Spellblade (don't blame me that the RNG gods hate me)
Off Hand: Accursed Spine
Ranged: Gemmed Wand of the Nerubians
Hands: Valorous (completing my 2xT7 bonus)
Waist: Girdle of Bane
Legs: Leggings of Atrophy
Feet: Sandles of Crimson Fury
Rings: Band of Channeled Magic, Signet of the Kirin Tor
Trinks: Illustration of the Dragon Soul, Extract of Necromantic Power (swap Mark of the War Prisoner with Extract sometimes)

I love the SP increase the added spirit gives but then again, it's NOT static and you will run into scenarios where it is wasted (as already well covered by others in this thread). IMO Tier 7 x4 is never going to be a popular choice for warlocks, just based on testing I've done (which is of course not infallible...).

Anyone know if Leuliers spreadsheet correctly calculates any sort of added DPS from the 4-piece?

I was able to pick up the robes in OS last night, and although they boost my haste quite a bit I had to break my 4-piece and respec a bit more more hit. Going to screw around in Naxx tonight with 3% more haste and no 4-piece, but since I never really chain life tapped anyway I'm wondering if it was even worth it to begin with. Trying to min/max with what I have, hording DKP hoping another Turning Tide drops(been 4 weeks) while fending off another Warlock on the meters with far superior gear. xD

Some of the gear mentioned will be clearly better because it's a whole grade higher than what people compare it to (200 vs 213 vs 226). The only way for it to not be an upgrade would be if the stats are all in the wrong areas. It would help if people listed the iLevel to make it more obvious.

I just managed to scrape together my 4t7 yesterday with a purchase of the shoulders (yes, the shoulders with a strangely low SP) to replace one of my few last blues and tried it out in a 10 man OS. It didn't seem to budge my DPS any life tapping as randomly as I did... though come to think of it, it didn't go down as much as it should have given the amount of life tapping I did do. So perhaps the other way of looking at it is that it's not so much to increase your DPS as it is to not reduce it when you are life tapping when not OOM. Besides, to be efficient and making the most of Siphon Life, Soul Leech, etc, you want to tap as soon as you can (I do it just before my filler spam) and run at less than 100% health so incoming heals aren't wasted. For long fights where your healers are a little weak on their MP5, the little heals can go a fair way.

I have never been one to sit down and focus over a spreadsheet so I thought i'd get some insightful help from you folks. My main question is: Should I have broken 4pc with my current gear and should I keep 2pc? For the last week it seems my dps has been all over the place from previous weeks. Here is a previous Patchwerk I did a great rotation on and pulled almost 6k ( WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish ) Would have loaded WWS but the parse expired -_- Here is my current gear setup:

Head: Hood of Rationality, T7.5 Head
Neck: Chain of the Ancient Wyrm
Shoulders: Mantle of the Corrupted, T7.5 Shoulders
Body: The Sanctum's Flowing Vestments, T7.5 Body
Wrist: Unsullied Cuffs
Hands: Gloves of Grandeur, T7.5 Gloves
Belt: Cincture of Polarity
Legs: Leggings of Mortal Arrogance
Ring: Lost Jewel
Ring: Band of Channeled Magics
Trinket: Dying Curse
Trinket: Sundail of the Exiled
MH: Haunting Call
OH: Surplus Limb
Wand: Wand of the Archlich


I normally have that setup but shoulders/gloves i use T7.5 for the 2pc. Should I be swapping anything else with my current gear or keep it that way? Im just wondering if the OS/Maly gear dps will override the 65dps 4pc / 32dps 2pc, or if keeping the 2pc would be the best option, and which slots to fill them with.

If you look over the thread I think it is agreed upon (to some extent) that when faced with replacing T7.5 with best in slot ilvl226 items, the 4pc set bonus just isn't worth it. Given the above setup I would keep the T7.5 shoulder and gloves, and use your Maly head and OS chest.

With the introduction of the lifetap glyph in 3.1 will the 4pc bonus + glyph surpass the ilvl226 items assuming your gear doesn't change?

Without the Glyph of Lifetap, with 4pct7 every time you lifetapped your spell power would increase by 300*.3 = 90 for 10 sec. With the glyph, it will increase to 300*.5 = 150, meaning an increase of 60 spell power for 10 sec. Will have to do the math to find out if the new gear is worth breaking the set, which it probably is.

All this assuming of course T8 will have the same effect, since most likely those T7 pieces will be replaced when 3.1 hits, right?

I replaced my t7.5 chest with the [Gown of the Spell-Weaver] My 4set bonus has been broken, yet it provides considerably more dps. Fact stands that having the best-in-slot items results in breaking the 4set bonus.

The 4set bonus would only be valuable if it was good enough to actually put life-tap in a rotation. As it is now, you only tap when you're oom, or very close to it. Therefore it's merely an 'okayish' bonus to your tap, nothing worth passing better items for.

Doesn't the lifetap glyph work from your total spirit as apposed to just the spirit gained from 4 pc.

So lets say you have 550 spirit and 4pc t7. With the glyph when you tap you will get 170 spellpower via the glyph ((550+300) * .2) for 20 sec, and another 90 spell power (300 * .3) for 10 sec.

so 260 spellpower for the first 10 sec and 170 spell power for the last 10 sec.

or am i wrong assuming the glyph will take the 4 pc spirit into account when it does its spell power calculations?

If you tap and gain 300 Spirit from T7, does the glyph bonus include the +300 Spirit right after the first Tap or do you have tap again (ie the managain from the 2nd tap > 1st tap because of the additional 300 Sprirt) ?

Im running 0/41/30 and have all 5 pieces of T7.5 of which I will be replacing the legs with the Wanton spellcasters...
my rotation goes:
CoA (to proc MC)
Cor (to proc 2piece)
Imo
LT (to proc 4piece)
spam incin until imo runs out)

Cor
Imo
LT
Spam incin

This rotation seems to offer me the best balance of keeping CoA up for MC, as well as proccing the 2piece and 4piece set bonuses without too heavy a GCD cost.

Thanks, very nice indeed. So are there calculations if 4T7 is better than a ilvl 226+2T7 Set ?

Curious for some feedback. Going into 3.1 I plan on speccing 40/31 with the new lifetap glyph. I currently own the T7.5 Pants, hands, and legs. I have NOT been able to get the T7.5 head or chest, but I do own the T7 head and chest. I also own the Wanton Spellcaster legs from Maly. I'm thinking the 4 piece bonus has enough value to wear the T7 chest and head with the T7.5 shoulders and hands, leaving the Wanton legs for the hit. Dropping from 7.5 to 7 is a loss of 24 spell power, 15 hit, and 8 haste, but if I swap in the T7.5 legs the hit loss from losing the Wanton legs significant, and my only other option would be to not have the 4 piece bonus.

With any luck Ill get the head and chest soon...but in case I dont I'd love some thoughts.

I find the 4pT7 to be incredibly useful. The reason for this is that I fit Life Tap into my rotation when I start to run low on mana (Life Tap, rotation until buff is almost gone, life tap again, rotation, rinse and repeat). Having the 4pT7 is roughly saved GCD per life tap cycle (mostly on stand-still fights like Patch), and reduces the amount of DPS lost during life taps. In essence, the very fact that you can SAVE a GCD and maintain DPS while you're life tapping and gaining mana is very useful.

However, I have not personally had the chance to experiment with majority ilvl226 gear. The reason for this is that I have 4 pieces not best in slot, and our guild takes a caster heavy composition to raids rather than melee heavy meaning the competition for higher end gear is tough. I think most some people are underestimating the value of 4pT7 (I'm reading about "random life taps".), but, mathematically, I also am not too sure just how good the raw DPS gain on the items is better than the DPS loss prevented by 4pT7.

At the moment (on live) it's best to have all BiS items, which automatically results in not having the four set T7 bonus. As we currently only tap when needed, it's not a major loss. 3.1's life tap glyph makes life tap finally worth including in our rotation. Ideally we'll tap every 20 seconds. At this point having the 4 set bonus is worth more than having the current BiS items.

Example:

For me this means that the current BiS items: [Hood of Rationality] and [Gown of the Spell-Weaver] will be replaced by the T7 head and chest.

To get those upgrades you need to be able to kill the bosses in the first place. And when you're learning a new boss, don't you take every advantage you can get? It seems to me that those few weeks (when no-one has more than a piece or two of T8 gear) will be when it will be most critical to have the best possible Naxx-level gear to allow the raid to kill bosses they are possibly undergeared for.

the whole point of this thread is to try and define the points you speak of. of course t7 is not going to last long. its a given.

pre 3.1, 300spi gave 90sp for 10s, or 117sp with demonic aegis. assuming you tapped every 20s, which is overtapping (for affliction at least), the value of 4pt7 is by highest estimate, <45sp for affliction and <58.5sp for demo-based builds. both values are low enough to justify breaking 4pt7 for many slots, for example replacing valour plagueheard legs with wanton, assuming you needed the extra hit or knew how to make adjustments for it.

post 3.1, with glyph of lt, 300spi gives you 150sp for 10s, or 177sp with aegis. assuming you tapped every20s, which is still overtapping for aff, but taken as rotation in 40/31, 4pt7 is worth <75sp for aff, and =88.5sp for demo specs.

assuming you have close to all BIS with 4pt7, no single ulduar item will grant you 80sp worth of an upgrade. so then assuming you need 2 ulduar upgrades to make up 80sp, you would still be back at ~0 dps gained when you removed 2 pieces of t7.

the smartest choice would then have to be gathering 2pt8 before switching both in simultaneously, so that overall dps gain should be from the 2pt8 bonus. another way to look at it is to replace 4pt7 bonus with 2pt8 bonus, and take 2*13 ilvls worth of attributes as an upgrade. either way, i find it unlikely that you can justify breaking 4pt7 for non tier replacement.

I have 2 choices for maintaining 4piece bonus:
With Putrid Vestments or with Hood of Rationality. What would be my best choice?

edit:

I see Bakka is back with a new spreadsheet. Will try to get the info from there.

edit2:
Didn't make me any wiser since the spreadsheet claims that the t7.5 robe is an upgrade over heigan's which can't be right.

I took the trouble of of putting together all the stats of the two choices including gems and socket bonuses:

Heigan's/t7 helm ----- Rationality/t7 chest
198 sta ------ 195 sta
136 int ----- 130 int
50 spi ------ 147 spi
49 hit ------ 51 hit
256 dmg ------ 287dmg
123 haste ------ 50 crit


What do you think? I don't like losing such a big amount of haste but maybe all the spirit and crit makes up for it?

SimCraft numbers also point to Valor>Heigan's as well.

Gear Ranking - Chest

Seeing you are under hitcap even with heigan+valor cap (1% assuming full hit buffs), I think it's safe bet to say you'll get lesser dps results if you go down that 49 hit rating by putting on Hood of Rationality, even taking into account lesser personal dps of meta.

I won't go down 49 hit rating. I'll go down 2. 51-49=2. My hit will be over 11% either way. And whatever build I decide on today will include suppresion.

But I guess I'll go with maly helm then, thanks for pointing out that list ruthless.