First round of check-through:
Affliction 56_00_15 in a Demo warlock setup changes to NIC as 2nd BiS trinket.
(This would be the point where Blizzard rethinks the crit-rolling as intended statement, again).
Rechecked, added tier deviation. Updated WoWhead.
56_00_15 done.

Affliction 55_00_16 in a Demo warlock setup changes to NIC as 2nd BiS trinket as well.
Switched neck/offhand to more spirit gear, crit-spirit is more balanced now in scaling and it's a slight gain(so minor that I won't recalc trinkets)
Rechecked, added tier deviation. Updated WoWhead.
55_00_16 done.

That's it for today, Destro and Demo tomorrow.

Having tried 56_0_15 this week for the first time in ICC 25 and ICC 10, there's a glaring problem I have -- Professor Putricide in particular.

Life Tapping when running has always been a way to boost your dps since you're going to be out of range of the boss at times. Obviously with 56_0_15 you're using Dark Pact.

The problem lies in that, on this fight, and other fights where you're forced to move out of range of the boss, you're often moving out of range of your pet, which makes Dark Pact unusable. You're then forced to Life Tap, which defeats the purpose of the spec and gearing, since you're getting less mana return from Life Tap because you're not gearing spirit.

Neither affliction spec takes Grim Reach (which I assume works with Dark Pact).

This is one scenario that I would assume is hard to model in simulationcraft.

hmm i must admit i not had the range problem i did putri 10 man as afflication (normally demo in 25 man) and found it fine and no range issues at all, on green ooze i dont see how your pet can be out of range and on the brown ooze if your not targetted moving to the middle of the room gives you a position where you can nuke down the add as a range and also means you shouldn't be out of range of healers/pet/putri etc etc

Can you specify better what corruption keeps rolling when refreshed?
For example, if as you say it keeps ISB it should also keep totem of wrath, moonkin aura etc.
Also, if it rolls trick of the trades because it is a damage increasing effect, will it also roll the extra damage from ebon plaguebringer et similia?

Well during these fights, I kept my pet on the boss the whole time, as it would be a dps loss to have it change targets.
I guess it depends on your guild's strategy and the fight.

Unless I am missing something. I think a mistake has been made in creating the Demo rDPS profile, as it doesn't seem to provide a superior raid benefit. I'll use Wowhead's numbers, although I suspect they may not be 100% accurate.

pDPS Demonic Pact Benefit
[(1.1 Kings)*554 Spirit*0.59 Fel Armor/Life Tap+3597SP]* 0.1 Demonic Pact = 395 SP/caster


rDPS Demonic Pact Benefit
[(1.1 Kings)*873 Spirit*0.59 Fel Armor/Life Tap+3338 SP]*0.1 Demonic Pact = 390 SP/caster

Am I missing something glaring? It would be much easier to gear for the various specs if we didn't have to consider this "rDPS" spec.

That's interesting, but a 15 sp gain per caster isn't really substantial unless the specs are within 100-200 dps (and then it would only be a trade-off). Hardly worth gearing for, because it makes off-specs substantially weaker as well. I know in the first post it's stated that there's more testing that needs to be done. I just wanted to submit this into the discussion.

If you compare the 2 profiles its essentially 300 haste vs 300 spirit. Yes it's worth gearing for spirit over haste.

This might be a dumb question but I'm gonna ask anyways, I know that you pop a wild magic potion before a pull as affliction but during bloodlust do i use potion of speed over potion of wild magic even though im already at 700haste with spellstone? Do i pop potion of speed over wild magic as destro during bloodlust as well? Thanks.

A very interesting comparison came up today when I discussed set items with a few people.
Wowhead #1
Wowhead #2
Considering that we are supposed to trade in 258 items for 264, the raw gain of these items is very small.
If one now factors in that breaking the T9 2piece bonus for the T10 4piece bonus only gives a very minor gain(or loss?)(as destro and demo), it is quite a hard situation we look at.
I´ll therefore even extend my initial Compendium statement, if you have 245 T9 - make a double swap of legs/chest.
If you have 258 T9 legs/gloves - I´d even suggest waiting till you have 2x264 tokens, then do the chest/leg switch and keep T9 gloves(or alternatives from ICC).

This problem can be easily solved by replacing Corruption on your action bar with a macro that uses Nevermelting Ice Crystal then casts Corruption, so that you'll never have to worry about a stack getting dropped before your Corruption lands.

One interesting thing I found out when looking at potential offset pieces for BiS Destruction was that when I took your current BiS gearset and replaced the [Sanctified Dark Coven Leggings] with [Plaguebringer's Stained Pants], the scale values for crit and haste actually shifted making crit slighty better than haste (the scale values for crit resp. haste was 1.34 and 1.22). With T10, the haste value is around 34% and with Plaguebringer around 37%. Could that mean that the point of making haste become worse is around 35%? (somewhat like a soft cap?)

When creating the destruction profiles Madlax actually saw a fairly big DPS decline after 1150 (?) haste, see the plot table here:
Link

About LT glyph:
At which low point of spirit is another glyph better? [Glyph of Corruption] for example which does stack with nightfall talent according to earlier discussions so it can be a dps gain. I´m at 595 spirit unbuffed with 4xT9 but looking at T10 I will certainly loose alot spirit.

He was refering to the Haunt spell using a charge off the Crystal if you activate it while Haunt is still in flight to the target. So even if you macro the Crystal to your Corruption spell, if you hit the macro before Haunt lands on the target, the Crystal will affect Haunt and possibly drop a charge.

So I was trying to compare the T9 4pc bonus to the T10 2pc bonus and what I got for my spec was that they are roughly even for me as demonology.

On a Festergut kill immolate and corruption was 19.8% of my DPS, which was 7690.8.

7690.8 x .198=1522.7784
So corruption and immolate together was 1522.7784 DPS.

1522.7784 x .10=152.27784

The T9 bonus adds 10% dmg to corruption and immolate so the 4pc bonus added 152.27784 DPS.

On this same fight Incinerate, Soulfire, and Shadowbolt consisted of 69.6% of my DPS, and my current DPS increase per point of crit according to simcraft is .9579.

The T10 bonus adds 5% crit which is 229.358 crit rating. So the value of T10 2pc for me should be:

.696(229.358 x .9579)= 152.91261

So the T10 bonus for me is 152.91261 DPS, which makes the T10 2pc bonus for demonology warlocks a .63477 DPS increase.

Naturally this is rough math and the dmg % for my abilities will change per fight, but overall the bonuses seem to be about even for demonology.

I just run a 10k iterations simcraft with 56-0-15, and it is saying that spirit is per point still better than crit rating. Do you have any hard proof that shows if (and eventually when) crit overtakes spirit for 56-0-15?

If anyone ever stumbles across this post, faithfully ignore it as a work in progress.

4.0 Compendium
General: Introduction

The purpose of this thread is to compile information regarding the Warlock class into a single thread. It will contain relevant information for viable talent specs and recommended use of gems/consumables.
This thread is targeted at serious raiders as well as people new to the warlock class. The information and base numbers we work with however are purely meant for endgame raiders. It is not in this threads interest to compare, compile and evaluate gear, glyphs and playstyles at non-endgame level of gear.
If you've got interesting/complex questions regarding warlocks, please ask them in the existing threads and not here. If you have very basic questions or alike, please use the "Simple Questions/Answers" thread in the stickys instead.

General: Authors note
People do not come to EJ to get ultimate answers - you come here to understand the fundamentals and get better knowledge on your class.
"Tell me, what spec does best DPS and what glyphs shall I use".
That is not a question you can answer or this Compendium will answer for you. Specs perform different per encounter, per task you take and per gear you have.
Understanding the ups and downs each spec has over another, the benefits and drawbacks - that is what this Compendium is trying to teach you in short version. We seek to answer questions with prove, not with sarcasm and ignorance.
Simcraft is but a guideline and a tool. Using it to get numbers is great, being able to analyse those numbers and make educated suggestions from them is a gift. Simcraft is NOT the ultimate answer, keep that in mind.

General: Work in Progress
This thread is always a work in progress. As with the 3.2 and 3.3 compendium, small changes and balancing always happen to the game. As right now(15.7.2010) the Beta of Cataclysm has barely started, a lot is NYI and a whole lot is bound to be changed sooner or later.
Most of what this thread is going to consist of until release is not speculative, but raw provided information and educated/possibly verified guesses.

Talents:
With the recent switch of demanding 31 points in a tree before another tree can be accessed the possible number of specs went down to 9 which will be referred to in a simple naming pattern:
destro(deep destro) - destro/aff - destro/demo
demo(deep demo) - demo/destro - demo/aff
aff(deep aff) - aff/destro - aff/demo

I don't deny that, the problem here is that we don't have a situation like:

• at a gear level like that, spirit < crit
• getting new items, since crit comes before spirit, you get closer to the bis, reduce the amount of spirit even more, and consequently spirit << crit

The average joe that doesn't have the top gear but still an average ilvl of 245 will find itself in a weird position, because if he picks items with crit over spirits, he will lose dps (on the immediate future at least) rather than gain it, as shown by the spirit and crit scales I've posted, in turn getting closer to the bis and point after which crit becomes better than spirit, or he can pick the spirit one, and gain dps right away, getting even further from the point where crit becomes better than spirit.

I haven't seen this posted here, but shouldn't you get a weapon with a high amount of crit, put a firestone on it, and have it equipped when you cast your first corruption, then swap it out? Weapon swapping invokes a 1.5s GCD though.

This would be a good idea to do when the amount of crit gained (and thus damage) exeeds the amount of damage lost by losing a GCD. Macroing the swapping of weapons will reduce the time lost and on longer fights this is probably worthwile if you can keep corruption rolling.

I'm guessing it depends on the amount of crit gained, the amount of crit you allready have and the length/mechanics of the fight, but it does seem like a good idea.

Edit: I was mistaken, I could not replicate this behavior, my apologies.

Crit rolling seems to be hotfixed. 10 minutes on a dummy after popping NMIC at the start of the fight resulted in identical crit rates of UA and Corruption. At least we won't have to wait for the Imp SB debuff to cast corruption now.