Use crit gem to increase damage on boss

[thetrueavatar]

I was just thinking while driving my car that it would be nice to increase my crit when fighting bosses like void,gruul ,janalai,ak'ilzon.
Indeed the theorycraft in leulier spreadsheet make the assumption that you don't move and continue to cast your spell without any interrupt. This is not true on most of the boss. So I was asking me if it would not be good to put more crit. As you don't dps the boss all the time it would be good to increase the damage done during the "short" time we have to cast our spell. What do you thing about it ?

[Geckothan]

Terrible idea, Affliction gains very little from crit compared to what it gains from spell damage. Just keep stacking spell damage. I'm sure this idea has been discussed to death and yet people (people with commonsense anyway) still stack pure spell damage as Affliction, and you should too. Gemming crit as Destruction is also pretty poor, you should be stacking spell damage and spell haste in that case. You're right that spreadsheets and simulators make the assumption that you're standing still casting constantly, but I'd much rather trust those numbers than go by "feel".

[thetrueavatar]

oops forgot to mention that it was of course for destruction (0/21/40) not affliction.
Spreadsheet is good in theory but in practice the "dreamed" dps is pretty impossible to reach. I have tried with a demonology build. All de buff,potion,... read all the tactics and I failed reaching the same dps as in afflication while spreadsheet indicates 300dps more.

The real things happen in the game not in a spreadsheet ^^.

[Soulzar]

Don't do it. Take a look at your gear, now compare your current gems to all +10 crit gems. Add it up and divide by 22.1 and you will probably find that even something as drastic as replacing ALL your gems will only bring your crit up 2% or 3%. Now realistically your not going to be breaking socket bonuses to stack yellow gems, so your end result when just changing yellows/oranges around will be very minimal in terms of upping your crit.

Out of Spell damage, Crit, Haste... Haste is the only one that isnt abundantly avail through group/raid bufs.. and thus you should gem for it where you can without sacreficing items you can stack with reds

[Valimir]

I agree with the problems with spreadsheets but they are a decent guide. I don't want to get into the whole haste v crit discussion as you can find other threads on it. I can only repeat what has been written in Buzzkill's guides for raiding warlocks where he recommends using hybrid crit/damage gems (assuming you're hit-capped ofc). His advice comes from experience at the highest end of raiding rather than theorycrafting - not that there's necessarily anything wrong with theorycrafting.

I've actually found on the sheet that with my gear the hybrid crit/damage gems are equal to or just ahead of raw damage gems. The haste/damage gems are always ahead of others but remember that the sheet overrates the value of haste at low levels.

Buzz's guides:
http://nihilum.mousesports.com/en/article/18

http://nihilum.mousesports.com/en/ar..._for_warlocks/

[thetrueavatar]

Thanks a lot for your answer. MY build 0/21/40 around 1250 shadow damage(+80 crusade card) and only 19% crit(+5%) and 202 hit. Do you consider it as low level and advice me to put crit/damage in orange slot or should I already start with haste/damage gems ? As the epic gem npc just pop up I could buy quickly epic quality gem.

PS: I know that I don't have enough critical by my gear. I will probably make a threat in the pimp my gear part to know how to fix it.

[Valimir]

I noiced that you are ar 202 spell hit, don't go below that. Some people would disagree, but I would use +12 damage, or crit/damage gems if I were you. You will get no DPS improvement with a a few haste/damage gems because you have no haste on your gear. I've tried haste/damage gems but I'm going to follow the Buzzkill advice for now.

[Geckothan]

Originally Posted by Valimir

His advice comes from experience at the highest end of raiding rather than theorycrafting - not that there's necessarily anything wrong with theorycrafting.[/url]

Most people who come up with the majority of formulas used for theorycrafting are also at the "highest end of raiding". Buzzkill isn't the be-all and end-all of warlocks. I'd personally rather trust solid numbers backed up by maths than observations from 1-2 over-hyped players from a "famous" guild, but that's just me.

Back on topic, your crit is a little low as you've already mentioned, but I don't think regemming isn't the best way to go about fixing that, just replace a few bits of gear instead (could we get an armory link? I can't find you on there with the info in your profile. would make it easier to advise you if I could see what gear you actually had).

Also, don't bother gemming haste unless you can get a decent chunk elsewhere, in which case you'd be using the haste gems to build on top of that as opposed to using the gems alone to build up haste. Haste is THE best dps stat next to spell damage, but only if you can get a decent amount of it, if you can only get something like 10 haste, don't even bother. Spreadsheets do overvalue haste a little.

[Devicus]

The whole "don't take haste items" thing he makes is in the context of a SPLAT raider. Meaning you have almost every item at the game as a possibility. As such, what he means is that the items with haste on, at that level are only worth taking in the examples he gives. It doesn't mean ignore haste, just that, when you think about it, it's obvious, ZA items have haste, but if you're taking them, you're gimping yourself, not because haste sucks but because they're T5 items. And you can lose the haste and get A LOT more crit and spell instead. If you're only got ZA T4 and T5 items, and badgeloot, then that's fine, but that's not a guide for someone looking into gruul or void reaver.

[Valimir]

Originally Posted by Geckothan

Most people who come up with the majority of formulas used for theorycrafting are also at the "highest end of raiding". Buzzkill isn't the be-all and end-all of warlocks. I'd personally rather trust solid numbers backed up by maths than observations from 1-2 over-hyped players from a "famous" guild, but that's just me.

I wasn't having a go at theorycrafters, I use the spreadsheet myself but it isn't the be all and end all for determining optimum DPS. I actually think crit works better when you get it in large chunks from gear but if you are a little short of crit and you can afford to do it without gimping hit, then 4 crit/damage gems will give you close to 1% extra crit which in the case of the OP would get him around the magic 20% mark. It's also very easy to say "change a few bits of gear" but you can't affect what drops and gems allow you some freedom to modify your stats without relying on luck and maybe DKP (or whatever loot allocation system you use).

I agree with your thoughts on haste, I don't think it's the way to go for the OP based on his armory and as I said, on the spreadsheet crit/damage gems come out roughly even with pure damage gems.