Warlock PvE Raiding Info/Guide

[Warsaw]

'Ενα αρκετά πλήρες guide για όλα τα PvE specs για Warlocks, καθώς και για χρήσιμες συμβουλές. Ίσως έχει κανά-δυο μικρά λάθη αλλά καλύπτει τα πάντα μέχρι και το patch 3.08.

[PVE] Raiding info / guide
----------------------------------------------------------

1] Introduction
2] No training dummys
3] Rotation
4] Affliction
5] Demonology
6] Destruction
7] About Hit
8] About Crit
9] General tips


Introduction:
----------------------------------------------------------

The reason I'm writing this guide is for the most part a lack of a good raiding guide- and a number of really poor rading guides (or guide look-a-like's) popping up in these forums. Additionally, what's good and what isn't really isn't as clear cut as it was throughout TBC and there are a lot more different and viable ways to do DPS now.

I have played most viable DPS specs so far, and done 5k+ DPS in every one of them. Obviously I've not played every single spec within the past week, but I do have experience playing mostly any spec.

I do not think there currently is a thing that can be considered "the best spec", argueably affliction will come out on top when it comes to nuke fests, but a spec is only as good as it's performance in the relavant content. What I mean by this is that, for example Affliction would perform terrible on a M'uru type of fight (We already see this to a lesser extend on Sarth 3D).



No training dummys:
----------------------------------------------------------

I often see people compare their DPS in one spec on a training dummy against their DPS of another spec on a training dummy. To put it bluntly; stop doing this. Why? For the most part because training dummys do not provide real world information- you're missing all sorts of buffs that will affect different talents and different specs in very different ways. For example; empowered imp basically does nothing on a training dummy because it's missing 18% worth of raid crit buffs.

That doesn't mean you should stay away from training dummys all together- but you should really understand what to use them for. A training dummy should be seen as just that- a training dummy. A training dummy is a training dummy, it's good to practice your new rotation with- it's good to practice on them- they just don't make a very good benchmark.

In terms of actually testing a talent spec- nothing beats actually bringing it to a raid. With the simplicity of the current raid content and how well mostly any spec can perform- there shouldn't be anything stopping you from trying each talent spec in a raid.



Rotation:
----------------------------------------------------------

I'm a fairly frequent poster here, and one of the very few that actually bothers to do any half assed theory crafting on these forums. As such, people ask me a lot of questions. That's fine, I like questions. There's 1 question however that I hate. Really, no question annoys me more than someone asking me "What is your rotation?". I don't have a rotation, and if you want to do decent DPS- neither should you. Warlocks should cast their spells in order of importance. This generally means that you just cast whichever spell has the highest DPSC- and really that's about it. There is no rotation, there is DPSC priority.

Affliction:
----------------------------------------------------------

Affliction is still by most people seen as the highest DPS spec currently available to Warlocks. This isn't a wrong observation to make- it's a very solid dps spec with worth while DPS cooldowns like Doomguard/infernal while providing solid mobile DPS and being relatively non-reliant on their pets. So overal, it's definitely a good all-round spec.

With that said, there's one thing that this spec doesn't have- and that's burst. This spec performs exceptionally well on long fights, provides extremely good sustainability- but if Ulduar were to produce a number of fights where burst is important, affliction wouldn't deliver.

The pet to use is the felhunter, though feel free to pop the doomguard or infernal whenever you feel it's suitable.

- Gear:

As with every Warlock spec, hit > spellpower > haste > spirit > crit.

For affliction, the emphasis on hitcapping your affliction spells is quite important. This is not because missing a curse of agony would be devastating (It would be somewhat trivial), but if you miss a haunt it really hurts your DPS. Get your hit capped before anything- but not at the cost of everything. 5 spellpower will beat 1 hit rating, so dont disregard everything just because a certain item has some hit rating.

To be hitcapped you need a total of 17% hit, you can get 3% from raid buffs (Priest Misery or Druid Improved Faerie fire), you can get 3% for affliction and destruction spells with suppression and Catalysm respectively, and if you're alliance you can get 1% from being grouped with a draenei.

The second most important stat is spellpower, and after spellpower there's a pretty big gap in value towards the next best stat. Neither haste, spirit, or crit is really a good stat for affliction. No, Pandemic does not make crit a good stat.

- Spec:

There are a few different variations available, but for the mot part you should try something close to:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

- Glyphs:

Glyph of Siphon Life
Glyph of Immolate
Glyph of Curse of Agony

- Spell priority: (In order of importance)

Haunt is pretty the most important spell you've got. Ideally you keep this debuff up as much as possible without refreshing it too early. Refreshing it early is not the same damage loss as refreshing a dot early would be, but essentially it still means you end up casting it more often, which is cast time lost for your other spells.

Also make sure Corruption is up- this should not be a problem aslong as you're using haunt properly. But if for any reason this debuff drops off, it should be high on your priority list to get it back up there.

Curse of Agony- This comes in fairly high on total damage and lasts a long duration. It should be a high priority to refresh this when it's down.

Siphon life- while this abbility doesn't do that much damage, it does last a long time. This results in high DPSC. This does mean though, though while this spell is important, it loses value quite fast when it doesn't reach it's full duration.

Unstable affliction- Not much to say here.

Immolate- this spell is your lowest priority dot. Note that people often link Unstable affliction and immolate together to simplify their rotation. Since these spells are roughly at the same level of importance this can definitely be worth doing. It might lower your DPS slightly, but shouldn't be a notable difference.
Some people drop this spell from their rotation below 25% because it benefits from neither Soul Siphon or Death's Embrace. Technically it'll still beat your filler spells on DPSC, but if you feel it complicates your rotation too much it's not a big deal to stop casting it below 25%.

Shadow Bolt- This is your normal filler spell. Use it when none of the other spells needs to be casted.

Drain Soul- This spell should replace Shadow Bolt below 25%, the reason for this is that it does 4 times its normal damage below 25%. Although this spell does a lot of damage at this point in the fight, your dots will still return more damage per specond spent casting them- and your (affliction) dots also increase the damage drain soul does through Soul Siphon.
It is fine to interrupt channeling Drain Soul to refresh dots (really you should do this), but when you do this try to interrupt it right after this spell ticks.

Demonology:
----------------------------------------------------------

It wasn't long ago that demonology was widely regarded as unviable, subpar, etc. Then Blizzard released patch 3.0.8 and buffed our pets through the roof. This resulted in both, better pet DPS- aswell as more spellpower gained through Demonic knowledge. As of right now, this spec is probably the closest you can get to affliction DPS without actually speccing affliction.

The spec performs well in sustained DPS aswell as burst, and depending on your gear, spec and raid setup- it might provide a very nice raid buff to boot. The main downfall of this spec however is it's heavy reliance on the Felguard. If the felguard for any reason is not a option, or the fight provides a gimmick to boost your DPS heavily without also buffing your pet (IE: Thaddius)- this spec becomes a lot less attractive.

Fortunately, the Felguard comes with a healthy health pool, and typically he'll be able to survive most encounters (Sapphiron for example should be no problem).

It should Perhaps also be noted that it feels quite awkward to

- Gear:

As with every Warlock spec, hit > spellpower > haste > spirit > crit.

Hit rating is still your best DPS stat, and you should really try to cap it with gear because hit rating gained through buff food does not effect our pet. With that said, there's not really any spell that would be disastrous to miss like affliction and destruction. It's still your best DPS stat though.

Spell Power is the next best stat. and is the only stat that your pet really scales well with. Past that, it's also the stat that has the largest effect on your own DPS. There's not quite the same gap that affliction has to the next stat, but a gap is still there.

Haste rating is the next stat, it has an effect on all of your spells and is fairly cheap compared to 'the lesser stats'. This is the last really decent stat. after this the value goes down hill fast.

Spirit is now a beneficial spell. It's not as good as most pure DPS stats, but its definitely a stat you shouldn't ignore. Consider it's value to be roughly half a spellpower for each point- it can't be directly calculated like that, but it's a good rule of thumb.

Crit rating is Unfortunately a quite bad. It does kind of scale with your pet if you're specced for it- but that doesnt make this a less sub-par stat. Depending on wether you're specced for your pet gaining part of your crit rating, you should either value this the equal or slightly below spirit.

- Spec:

There are 2 notable Demonology specs:
0/41/30: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
0/53/18: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Depending on your raid/preferences/gear it's perfectly reasonable to swap points from Master Conjurer to Improved healthstones, or in meta/ruin from Catalysm to Improved CoA and Molten Core - try to avoid putting more than 1 or 2 points into molten core with Meta/Ruin..

- Glyphs:

Glyph of Felguard
Glyph of Immolate
Glyph of Curse of Agony

Note that if you spec meta/ruin (0/53/18) it's perfectly viable to cast Curse of Doom instead of Curse of agony. It should be noted however that if you do this you should replace Glyph of CoA with Glyph of Corruption.

- Spell Priority: (In order of Importance)

Metamorphosis- You'll want to synchronise this with Bloodlust/Heroism. However if the fight is long enough, try use it earlier aswell and use this as often as possible.

Immolation aura- This is a Metamorphosis only abbility, and it does a lot of damage for the one GCD you'd spend on this. Pop this as soon as you go into metamorphosis (make sure you're in melee range).

Curse of Doom is obviously your highest DPSC spell. However you should only use this if the boss has a healthy chunk of health left and you're "Meta/Ruin" specced.

Immolate does more DPSC than CoA/Corruption in 0/41/30, and Curse of Doom should generally be prefered for 0/53/18. So this is your highest priority if you're 0/41/30.

Curse of Agony should be used either if you're specced 0/41/30 (Important for Molten Core uptime), or if you're Meta Ruin and the fight has less than a minute left to go on it. Try avoiding this all together if the fight has less than 20 seconds left in it.

Corruption Slightly better DPSC than incinerate/Shadow bolt, and for 0/41/30 also an increase to your Molten Core uptime. Still, this spell isn't of immense importance, do use it, but don't worry too much about it.

Incinerate should be your filler if you're 0/41/30 specced.

Shadow Bolt should be your filler if you're 0/53/18 specced.

Destruction:
----------------------------------------------------------

Right now I'm more or less convinced that destruction is currently the lowest DPS spec. Which is sad because it's a lot of fun to play. If anyone can proof me wrong here, do feel free. But I for one haven't actually seen deep destruction builds break 6k dps without AoE or ToT abuse.

With that said, this spec is possibly the most versatile spec of all. It has very solid burst, it does great sustained DPS, and while a little reliant on the pet- not very much so (Not compared to demonology anyway).

Make no mistake though, while destruction was known an notorious for it's 'face rolling' in TBC, I personally find it the most complex spec to perfect in WotLK. For the most part this is because, although you have fewer cooldowns too watch, the cooldowns are typically shorter, and generally a lot more connected to eachother. It's easy to do average at destruction, but perfecting it to the point of getting the right spells into backdraft (queing your cooldowns) and only refreshing corruption when Molten core isn't already up is next to impossible.

- Gear:

As with every Warlock spec, hit > spellpower > haste > spirit > crit.

Hit rating for destruction, is much like hit rating for affliction. For destruction it is quite devastating if your conflagrate misses, much like how it is devastating for affliction when haunt misses. Cap this first (But not at the cost of everything).

Spell Power is your second best stat, you simply scale best with this stat.

Haste is the next stat, upto around 600haste rating you're pretty safe, after that you might have some spells that start to rub the GCD cap in the wrong way during heroism. Past this, much like demonology, stats take quite a dive in value.

Spirit is still not a stat to disregard, roughly at the same level as it is for demonology.

Crit rating is bad, more on this later.

- Spec:

There are 2 notable specs at this moment:

0/28/43 Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
0/20/51 Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Esspecially to the 2nd spec, there are a good few variations. Typically taking Fire and Brimstone in favor of Unholy power.

- Glyphs:

Glyph of Conflagrate
Glyph of Immolate
Glyph of Imp

Some people choose to replace imp/immolate with CoA. This returns lower DPS, but the difference isnt huge.

- Spell Priority: (In order of importance)

Essentially the main difference between the 2 specs is that 0/20/51 boasts a slightly more complex rotation with Chaos Bolt. You can disregard Chaos Bolt if you're 0/28/43. Past that, as I wrote before I personally rate this as one of the hardest to perfect specs in terms of spell priority, which makes this part a little bit shaky.

Immolate is your highest DPSC spell, esspecially with the glyph it does a lot of damage, and it should be your #1 priority to cast at more or less all times.

Conflagrate reduces to cast time of your next 3 destruction spells by 30%, this is a pretty big DPS increase for the duration- try cast this spell whenever it's off cooldown.

Curse of Agony is your main dot to provide you with molten core uptime and does good DPSC. Keep it up

Chaos Bolt is another high DPSC spell, with it's slightly lower cast time it's essentially a slightly buffed up incinerate.

Corruption should be used if you have the 2xT7 set bonus. Other than proccing that, it also helps with molten core uptime.

Incinerate is your main nuke, use it when other spells dont need to be casted.

It should be noted that you can tinker with this priority system a little bit to get spells with more cast time into your backdraft. For example you could chaos bolt before conflgrate if your immolate is about to expire, so that you do not need to recast immolate during Conflagrate. While this doesn't follow the DPSC priority to the letter- it can (if done well) lead to higher DPS.

About hit:
----------------------------------------------------------

As seen in the previous posts, hit rating is one of the most valueable stats. You however can't just keep stacking hit rating until infinity, because at some point all of your spells are simply going to hit. That point is when you have a 17% extra chance to hit.

You can get towards this 17% with talents (suppression, catalysm) 3%, raid debuffs (Misery, Improved Faerie Fire) also 3%, raid buffs (Alliance only; Heroic Presence, group buff) 1%. In a raid you will generally have the hit rating buff, which means that you only need 14% more from talents or gear. Ideally you get hit rating through gear; and there's a few reasons for this.

1] Hit rating from gear effects all of your spells
2] A lot of really good gear has a large amount of hit rating
3] You get to spend your talents on other things

This is particularly true for affliction locks who sometimes spend up to 6 talent points on additional hit rating. Freeing all those points up would allow them to pick up other good talents.



About crit:
----------------------------------------------------------

There's a lot to be said about crit, if you've come this far you might have read numerous times already that I called this a bad stat. The reason behind this is a combination of things that really is a bit too much to go into for each individual spec- so I decided to make it a separate section.

Expensive. This is a very simple reason that anyone should be able to understand- to get 1% critical strike rating you need a lot more "item budget" then you'd need to get 1% haste (46 crit vs 33 haste).

Relative scaling. Essentially When you stack 1 stat, each increase will get you a linear increase in DPS. However as you increase- for example- crit by 50%, that means that if you add 1% haste, that 1% of extra casted spells will also benefit from that 50% crit. In sort this means that the more you have from 1 stat, the better your other stats become. Warlocks (Esspecially Demo / Destro specs) get a lot of critical strike rating from talents and raid buffs, while getting next to no haste from either (in comparison). This basically means that until you have an absolutely insane amount of haste, the amount of crit buffs pushes the value of haste further above the value of crit.

Dots. Haste effects all of your spells, from lifetap to curse of agony to shadow bolt. Crit typically only effects your nukes, and even if you're affliction and specced for Pandemic and have your crit effect some of your dots, its still not all spells,- still too little to really make it a worth while stat.

- How much crit do I need for destruction?

I see this question come up a lot, and the simple anwser is that you do not need any at all. This question is a "relic" from TBC times where Warlocks needed a lot of crit to help them keep up a healthy "Improved Shadow Bolt uptime". Destruction no longer procs any important buffs or debuffs with their crits, or otherwise actually gain any benefit at all from critical strikes other than the added damage. WHat this basically means is that crit is nothing but a dps stat, if you have very little of it and have more of another stat- that's absolutely fine.

You might ask then, what about Meta/Ruin? That's a much better question, but still a question to which the anwser is none. It's true that Meta/Ruin gets an 'important' buff from shadow bolt critical strikes- however the truth is that with raid buffs (and talents) you already crit so much that you'll find yourself at nearly 100% uptime before any gear is taken into consideration. So again: you do not need critical strike rating.

Perhaps the spec that needs critical strike rating most is affliction Warlocks. This is because they do not get critical strike rating from talents at all, and yet they still rely on Shadow Bolt for a sizeable part of their damage output (while usually picking up improved Shadow Bolt). This is not to say that you need [x]% critical strike rating for affliction, or to say that it's a stat worth stacking- but it's definitely something to keep in mind.



General tips:
----------------------------------------------------------

I am a firm believer that a player's mind-set will make the biggest difference of all relavant factors to his DPS. Yes, your gear matters, your raid group matters, and RNG matters- but a lot of people complaining about their DPS simply have low DPS because they do not have the right mind-set. Yes it's true that making a minor change somewhere down the line will not result in a huge difference in DPS (Not generally anyway)- but if you really want to do better (Or just great) DPS, you will take every DPS increase you can get.

Essentially this means you don't slack on consumables. They might provide only a negliable DPS increase, and not all of them are essential on all raid content- but do not complain about your DPS if you're not throwing all consumables available at it.

Flask: The undisputable king of elixir/flasks for Warlocks. Use the Flask of the frost wyrm.
Food: If you're hit capped, use +46 Spellpower food. If you're not hitcapped, use +40 hir tating food.
Potion: Ideally Crazy Alchmist Potion (although slightly RNG), but potion of wild magic (affliction), potion of speed or runic mana potion are all good too (mana/speed for all specs).
Kreeg's Stout Beatdown: Easy to get in Dire Maul North. Very cheap consumable.
Pet Food: If you're using the felpup, this is probably not worth it. But for the Felguard or Doomguard you should be using +30 STR pet food.
Flame Cap: Deep destruction, or destruction/demonology hybrid specs should really use this if they wish to push out slightly more DPS. Unfortunately theyre becoming hard to get.

[Verbenae]

πολυ χρησιμο μπραβο. στα περισσοτερα συμφωνω.

[filippos97]

ευχαριστω πολυ για τα sites!!!