The Warlocks Den - WoW Warlock Discussions

Hey guys, i'll attempt to collate the vast amount of information in this thread in the shortest / easiest to read form.

Firstly i'd like to note the fact that blizzard did not release most of the formulaes for anything in the game. As such, ALL the information, statistics and formulaes are based on empirical evidence and collated by the community around the world. As such, we've gotta keep in mind that, untill Columbus find the Americas, we might be thinking that the world is flat.

Secondly, the specs, as sad as it might sound, there is no need for you or me or anyone to invent anymore specs. The specs that Akasha collated are the proven working specs. They are accepted as optimized specs. In translation to english that means that those are the BEST specs and anything else simply will not perform as good as they would.

The information that i will be providing below comes from:
1) This superb forum community, a great thanks to Akasha
2) Leulier's Warlock DPS Spreadsheet, it is the basis for all theorycrafting on warlocks worldwide, he has invested a tremendous amount of time to work out all the formulae's and they are 99.999999999999% correct.
3) Elitist Jerk's Warlock's Raiding Compendium, once again a superb source of informations, badly formatted though.
4) 3 years of personal raiding experience, i am not the best in the world - Clinkz is, but i am no less read up and informed than he is.


Facts to be accepted before we proceed:
1) Any raid boss is a level 73 mob and as such has a 17% chance to resist your spells.
2) You are in a raid, different set of variables will be applicable to 5 men instances.

The Grand Picture
There are 3 different talent trees. All 3 are good. All 3 are working. All 3 fun to play.
The grand picture behind warlock raiding and progression thru content is accepted to be the following:
T4 = Affliction
T5 = Demo
T6 = Destro
(those do not reffer to what you raid, those reffer to your gear equivalent, if you're in BT with full T4 you're still at T4 level)
There are a multitude of reasons behind this assumption. The two basic ones are:
Firstly the set bonuses.
Secondly the amount of spell hit available. At the T4 level you will never be able to max the spell hit at 202 without seroiusly gimping your DPS. If you do spec destro at T4 level, you are effectively doing a LOT less DPS than you would with affliction spec on the same gear level.
T5 has more spell hit, but not enough to go destro yet, which is why demo build heavily relies on the pet damage and the massive spell damage buff you get from the talents.
T6 has a lot of spell hit as well as you have access to a load of other spell hit / crit gear which makes the destro spec the most feasible.

My personal advise to you, if you're just getting into Kara don't jump the gun and spec destro, raid as affliction. Enjoy it, have fun with it. Once you've got your T5 go demo, and have fun with the Felguard. He is mad, he is awesome and he beats the hell outta things while you're eating your dinner and beating everyone else on the damage meters. Only after you've got up to 202 spell hit some decent spell damage and spell crit go for destro and drool at those 9k+++ shadow bolts annihilating the mobs. If you follow this, you will enjoy all the aspects of your class and you will actually progress thru the game as it was planned.
AFFLICTION AND STATS
Commonly accepted as pre-Tier 4 and Tier 4 raiding spec. (not rated by content you raid, but rated by your gear, if you go into SSC and TK you are still considered at Tier 4 raiding level)

The best and the most optimized raiding spec for you here is THIS.
Spell Rotation
There is no such a thing as the best spell rotation. It is a myth and there has been no math yet to prove any sequence as the BEST. The rule of the thumb is - renew your dots 0.5 seconds after the last tick, If you have a dot and it is not on the boss you're losing dps. The spells you will use for this build in any sequence that you are the most comfortable with:
1) Unstable Affliction
2) Corruption
3) Siphon Life
4) Immolate (It has lower DPS than Shadow Bolt, but it has higher DPCT (Damage Per Cast Time) and as such is more effective to have it in the rotation)
5) Curse of Shadow / Elements / DOOM (Not a curse of agony, COD has slightly lower DPS than Curse of Agony, but because of the GCDs you end up having 1 COD + 1 Shadow Bolt = 3 Curse of Agony in terms of time spent casting and in terms of damage the latter is lower)
6) Shadow Bolt, not an incinerate. Shadow Bolt for this spec is considered to be a "filler" spell, which means you cast it only when your dots are fully on and are not expired.

There is a little trick that a lot of players do not realize: Pairing up dots to do 2 spell casts in one GCD, for example you can cast Immolate and Corruption in a single GCD thus saving time. Basically a spell with a cast time should be followed by a spell with instant cast.

Stats rating (based on 900 shadow damage, 5% hit and 12% crit)

+1 shadow damage = 0.57
+1 fire damage = 0.06
+1 damage = 0.63
+1 hit rating = 0.58
+1 crit rating = 0.30
+1 haste rating = 0.24

Based on that in order of importance you will have:
SPELL damage > SPELL HIT > SPELL CRIT > SPELL HASTE
This is contradictory to the common belief that spell hit is always more important than anything else. The reason behind it is a "soft cap" on spell hit being at 76 spell hit, provided you have 5/5 in suppression talent. DOTs are hit capped at that point and only the Shadow Bolts will have a 10% chance to be resisted, however Shadow Bolts comprise a maximum of 50% of an afflicton warlock's DPS which basically means that spell his past 76 is only half as important to an affliction lock as compared to the destro lock.

DEMONOLOGY AND STATS
There are a few ways to play the demonology, however majority goes with the felguard. This is one of the best discussions and descriptions of the spec and what comes with it. 6/44/11 is pretty much the default spec for aspiring Felguard Users.

Spell Rotation
There are 4 spells you will be using here:
1) Immolate
2) Corruption
3) Curse of Shadows / Elements / Doom
4) Shadow Bolt (once againt a filler spec)

Now in terms of the stats that you need for that spec, based on average of 1100 shadow damage 23% crit the following occurs and if your spell hit is below 202:

+1 shadow damage = 0.53
+1 fire damage = 0.07
+1 damage = 0.60
+1 hit rating = 0.66
+1 crit rating = 0.29
+1 haste rating = 0.42

SPELL HIT > SPELL DAMAGE > SPELL HASTE > SPELL CRIT
Basically, as many times mentioned you should cap your spell hit before proceeding to go for any other stats. Do keep in mind though that giving up 100 spell damage for 5 spell hit isn't worth it either.

DESTRUCTION AND STATS
Commonly accepted as a Tier 6 or equivalent raiding spec.
The typical examples are listed here, the most effective of them is a shadow DS / Destro build - 0/21/40
My personal favourite is the example 3 listed there.

Spell Rotation
Shadow Bolt only.
This spec benefits the shadow damage tremendously (provided you DS a succy), the shadow damage scaling is a lot higher than fire damage. Based on that the immolate will actually reduce your overall DPS by approximately 1%.
Confraglate is generally assumed to be the worst spell in warlock's arsenal when it comes to sustaining overall DPS. There are more details on that in the EJ forums, if you wish to find out more indepth info on that please check out the math listed out in the compendium i've linked at the beginning of this thread.

To even start out as a destro lock you should fulfill the first and the most important requirement - CAPPED SPELL HIT at 202. Whenever anyone goes into the math behind the 0/21/40 spec they normally assume that you're capped in terms of your spell hit. If you are not capped, and your spell hit is in 100-200 gap, you will be able to put out a higher amount of DPS being demo spec.

Now lets have a look at the value of the stats, assuming an average of 202 spell hit, 1200 shadow damage and 27% to crit (inclusive of talents) the values will look like this:

+1 shadow damage = 0.81
+1 fire damage = 0.00
+1 damage = 0.81
+1 hit rating = 0.00
+1 crit rating = 0.73
+1 haste rating = 0.77

Which translates into:
SPELL damage > SPELL HASTE > SPELL CRIT

Spell damage is more valuable than anything else simply because the spell damage scaling coefficient for 0/21/40 spec is mad - 105.7% (according to EJ).
However there is an interesting factor to take in consideration here - there is a spell damage barrier, after which the value of the stats changes order. This is a very volatile number to determine and varies in different circumstances.
- If you are in the raid, and there are other warlocks with the ISB debuff, the breaking point will be 1350 spell damage.
- If you are soloing / doing 5 men and you are the only ISB debuff provider the breaking point will be at 1450-1550 spell damage.
Here's what happens:
If you are in the raid with one more warlock that provides ISB debuff and has 27% crit rating you will have:

+1 shadow damage = 0.83
+1 fire damage = 0.00
+1 damage = 0.83
+1 hit rating = 0.00
+1 crit rating = 0.67
+1 haste rating = 0.85

Which translates to:
SPELL HASTE > SPELL DAMAGE > SPELL CRIT
As you can see the spell haste and spell damage changed their positions. However please do note that the actual values are very near - 0.83 and 0.85. As you go higher with your spell damage the value of spell damage will not change while the value of spell haste will increase. 1350 spell damage might sound as a very unacheivable number, however it is not your spell damage that is in consideration here, it is the FULLY RAID BUFFED SPELL DAMAGE that we are talking about. Thinks like flasks, spell damage food, oils, totems, etc etc are all added up to your total spell damage and thus produce a number which could possibly be as high as 1500-1600 spell damage. At which point you will benefit from spell haste quite a fair bit.



P.S.
There may be some misinformation here, if you do notice some please do let me know and i will correct it asap. I have not covered all the possible sub-specs simply because these are the most common ones and are optimized to produce the highest possible DPS.