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April 10, 2009, 03:57 PM
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#1 (permalink) | |
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Character Info
lilsteele 80 Human Warlock Terenas Euro PvE |
Preview of possibly successful patch 3.1 raiding specs
Preview of Patch 3.1 Raiding Specs Preliminary Comments:
Most Important: Blizzard seems to have done an excellent job balancing the different warlock builds. Any of the specs I will present should be viable. The resulting dps and overall performance will mainly depend on the gear and skill of a player. Play the spec you like and are good at. DPS Rankings: This table has been produced with the above version of simulationcraft, without modifying any gear or talent builds. In particular T7 gear is used. I ran 10000 iterations for every build. The simulation assumes a fight length of 5 minutes. There are two sets of gear, one to be hit capped with 3% hit rating from talents, and one that is hit capped without 3% from talents, at the cost of some spellpower, crit and haste. Quote:
 Affliction with the Doomguard out wins, however since this guy has a rather long cooldown, lets neglect him for now. The good thing is that there are still 5 specs within 300 dps, so 0/40/31 is still playable. Deep destruction is a bit behind, but still not too far. There are four specs that have 40+ points in demonology. They depend on perfect Decimation execute, so they might be outperformed by Affliction locks in actual encounters. Time will tell. I'm not sure where the 100+ dps gain in the other demonology builds comes from. Over at EJ they say its from an improved use of Life Tap in the simulation. The builds: Deep Affliction (53/00/18) Glyphs: Haunt, Curse of Agony, Life Tap Pet: Succubus The well known and tested Haunt/Ruin build. This build has 3 points in supression, i.e. is suitable for locks that still struggle with their hit rating. Once this is reached, the points can be used for threat reduction. Note that the rotation has been simplified considerably. Siphon Life has been removed as a separate spell and buffs corruption now, and Immolate can no longer be used simultaneously with Unstable Affliction. Basically after the first round you just have to spam Shadowbolts, use Haunt when off cooldown and refresh UA and the curse of your choice. Below 25% replace SB with DS. Hybrid: Imp/Conflagrate (00/40/31) Glyphs: Life Tap, Conflagrate, Immolate Pet: Imp Highest DPS build before the Conflagrate nerf. Uses Curse of Agony, Corruption mainly to proc Molten Core. Cast immolate and dot up, then Incinerate and Conflagrate whenever it is off cooldown. Below 35% corruption is dropped. Then you cast Soul Fire whenever Decimation is up. You don't have access to 3% hit from talents. Note: The simulation assumes that you can maintain a perfect 1-1 rotation during the last 35%. If you don't understand what I'm talking about, search the forums for "Decimation" or "weaving." Hybrid: Felguard/Emberstorm (00/41/30) Glyphs: Life Tap, Felguard, Incinerate Pet: Felguard Basically the same as above, but you drop Conflagrate in favor of the Felguard. Requires better pet management, but you don't have to watch the Conflagrate cooldown. Not sure why the Incinerate glyph is used here and Immolate in the 40/31 build. Same note as above. Deep Destruction (03/13/55) Glyphs: Conflagrate, Immolate, Life Tap Pet: Imp Don't know much about this build. No molten core available, so Corruption is not used and CoD replaces Curse of Agony. Immolate, Incinerate, and Conflagrate and Chaos Bolt when off cooldown. I've never specced destro, I'm tempted to try it out now. This spec got hit hardest by the nerf to Conflagrate. Should still be playable though, but no longer an option for high end raiders. Deep Demonology (3/52/16) Glyphs: Life Tap, Felguard, Metamorposis Pet: Felguard Seems to be rather complicated to play, with Meta, Soul Fire, Demonic Empowerment to watch. CoD and Corruption, Immolate. Shadowbolt spam, below 35% Soul Fire replaces Corruption. I don't understand completely how meta is used in the simcraft build, but it is used  Deep Demonology II (00/56/15) Glyphs: Life Tap, Felguard, Metamorposis Pet: Felguard Same as above, but sacrifices +3% hit and one point in molten core in order to take Demonic Pact. The dps loss compared to the above build comes from the fact that you have to sacrifice other stats to compensate the 3% hit rating. Scaling: Affliction and 40/31 scale somewhat better than 41/30. Also destro might make a jump ahead in high end ulduar gear. Not sure about demonology builds right now. I did not calculate scaling factors since they seem to come out rather randomly with only 10k iterations. Life Tab: All simulations assume a life tab every 20 seconds, to keep Glyph of Life Tap activated. Apparently this is a huge dps gain, so you keep the glyph up even if you waste a bit of mana. Doomguard: The Doomguard has been nerfed, it's only a ~300 dps gain over an unbuffed succubus/imp/felhunter. Since all other builds have either buffed pets or rely on a certain active pet to be buffed, using the doomguard makes only sense as affliction lock. The cooldown has been lowered to 30 minutes, so in principle you have a doomguard up for half of the time. In practice this is less, since you loose it if you die, and you don't want him to despawn in the middle of a boss fight... it will be more useful while running through naxx, not that helpful progressing through ulduar. PTR: I've played affliction and the Hybrid builds on the PTR. 40/31 gives you many huge crits, thats fun. Making proper use of Decimation/Soul Fire is harder, I wonder how big the dps loss would be if you stick to a Incinerate-Filler Spell-Soul Fire rotation below 35%, there's Immolate, Conflagrate, Curse of Agony and Life Tab to cast anyways. Affliction is ok dps wise, but not really challenging anymore... but playable without dot-timer on the other hand (PTR addons clash). Curse of Elements: now gives 13% by default, no need to have someone spec affliction for that. Dual Specs: You could go Imp/Conflagrate + deep Affliction and switch to affliction whenever the Doomguard is off cooldown. I'm really happy that this is only a minor dps gain so I can savely use my second spec for PvP. But yeah, for min/maxers this would be optimal. Final Thoughts: I don't see any improvements in Afflictions AoE abilities, so it will stay behind in AoE damage compared to all other builds. Currently (3.0.8) this is fine, since Affliction delivers the highest damage on bosses, almost unchallenged. Now with the next patch all specs are equal up so why would you choose a spec that clearly stays back on trash? And trash/AoE damage is important for fast Naxx farm runs as well as for bosses that spawn adds. After the Conflagrate Nerf: Affliction and Felguard/Emberstorm seem to be the best raiding specs now. In actual encounters Affliction might be better since you do not depend that much on your pet's damage, you still do fine with a passive imp out if you find the succy dying too often. Furthermore the damage of destro specs depends to a large extent on the ability to execute the Decimation Weaving properly, which might not always be possible. For Trash and AoE heavy fights Demonology specs will be better... hell yeah, we do have dual specs anyways!!! Last edited by lilsteele; May 17, 2009 at 02:46 PM.. |
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April 10, 2009, 04:13 PM
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#2 (permalink) |
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Re: Preview of possibly successful patch 3.1 raiding specs
your amazing lilsteele |
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April 10, 2009, 04:21 PM
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#3 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Shiragi 80 Human Warlock Bloodhoof US PvE Guild: Refraction Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 53/0/18 |
Re: Preview of possibly successful patch 3.1 raiding specs
wow ty soo much... bwt you can switch dual specs in combaT?
__________________
Gives cash which is just as good as money... Afflic |
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April 10, 2009, 04:54 PM
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#4 (permalink) |
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Re: Preview of possibly successful patch 3.1 raiding specs
Probably also worth mentioning the raid benefits certain builds provide. Deep Aff - Will provide the S-bolt debuff of +5% crit to the raid as long as the lock is throwing S-bolts, probably not under 25% boss HP, but could sacrifice using Drain Soul execute to keep the debuff up if no Scorch mage is present. Hybrids - No raid benefits I know of. Deep Demo - Provides the S-bolt debuff 100% of the time potentially freeing a mage from wasting gcds, talent points and glyph slot on Improved Scorch. If Demo Pact is taken provides a Spellpower buff to the raid, potentially overwrites a shamans ToW at times. Best spec for raid buffs. Deep Destro - Potentially provides mana replenishment to the raid (if a build slightly different than the linked one is used). Probably the best spec to use Curse of Elements if your raid requires that. |
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April 10, 2009, 05:30 PM
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#5 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Satalitetv 80 Blood Elf Warlock Ravencrest US PvE Guild: Relic Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 3/15/54 |
Re: Preview of possibly successful patch 3.1 raiding specs
Actually, on the affliction sb buff, I found that while DS executing, if you just look at the timer for the buff and use SB whenever it's about to come down, you can keep it up without a problem and still use DS. Plus, you'll generally get a nightfall to proc somewhere in the middle, so you can always use those when you refresh your dots without much interference on DS. |
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April 10, 2009, 05:47 PM
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#6 (permalink) |
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Character Info
lilsteele 80 Human Warlock Terenas Euro PvE |
Re: Preview of possibly successful patch 3.1 raiding specs
thanks for the additional infos seems like the hybrid builds are for egoists... people who care about their group would go deep into some tree to bring the buffs Could you stack destro locks? 8 locks = 2% mana/second? edit: You can't switch specs while in combat. It's a 5 second cast out of combat. |
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April 10, 2009, 05:48 PM
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#7 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Satalitetv 80 Blood Elf Warlock Ravencrest US PvE Guild: Relic Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 3/15/54 |
Re: Preview of possibly successful patch 3.1 raiding specs
don't think the buffs stack do they? |
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April 10, 2009, 06:49 PM
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#8 (permalink) |
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Re: Preview of possibly successful patch 3.1 raiding specs
Replenishment doesent stack. Most serious raiding guilds wont need the Crit buff as right now the best mage spec is TOTW fire and includes scorch. Most serious raiding guilds have a shadow priest so the replenishment from destro will not be necessary. Deep demonolgy and the spell power increases scales. And will continue to scale. Therefore at higher gear levels it may indeed be necessary for serious raiding guilds to have a deep demonolgy warlock to supply the buff. This however goes back to is the loss in personal dps worth the raid gain in dps. With the scaling eventually it will be. In 3.08 its not Affliction with the doomguard is corrently showing to be the highest dps spec. 40/31 is a close second with no doomguard therefore seems more viable. However with duel specs avaliable you can have the best of both. You take the deep affliction build whenever the doomguard is off cooldown. When the doomguard is on cooldown you take the 40/31 hybrid spec. Also decimation execute rotation can be simplified merely by standing close to the boss. There are several encounters where you prolly cant do this, but on alot you will be able to. Then its just 1 incin then 1 soulfire over and over and over. Last edited by Vanthere; April 10, 2009 at 06:51 PM.. |
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April 10, 2009, 08:22 PM
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#9 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Satalitetv 80 Blood Elf Warlock Ravencrest US PvE Guild: Relic Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 3/15/54 |
Re: Preview of possibly successful patch 3.1 raiding specs
in fights where you can stand at max range, you can do 2 incinerates, then 1 SF 1 Inc rotation, but whenever you apply a dot that gets messed up, so it's not quite as easy as when you're in close range. |
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