Raiding: Malec Aff. a bit confused about next step

[Benriksen]

Name: Benriksen
Amory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...ar&n=Benriksen

Talents: 44/0/17 UA, Maledition, Shadow Embrace, Destructive Reach

Quick info
Health:7850
Mana:7150
+Damage:1276 (shadow, with fel armor)
Hit:145
Crit:11.28

Slots in need of upgrade:

Bracers-I have Vindicator's Silk Cuffs

Upgrades I'm working on

I have 91 badges, with more on the way so I could get the gloves, legs or boots. I also have the T4 Gloves, Head and Shoulders. I also have Ashyen's gift, the Karazhan exalted ring and Tormented Demon Soul Robes.

About me: I am the malecdiction/shadow embrace warlock in my guild. We have 4/5 in SSC and 3/4 in TK. My class leader is very experienced and told me to stack +spell damage only. I then used Leulier's spreadsheet and have gotten results where crit is about half as important as damage and hit slightly more. I've always known this but I am stumped on where to go next. I dont really see any +damage upgrades anymore so I'll have to go into crit it seems. What I'm having trouble with is deciding how much +damage is worth the crit.

[Lylie]

Currently I've cleared MH/BT, basically our Affliction lock still stacks + spell damage. In fact the only crit he has is from his gear. Crit is still important but not nearly to the extent that damage is. Yes shadow bolt still is 50% of your DPS, however the other 50 is from dots which do not benefit from crit.

My best advice to you is look for gear that has crit as well as a decent amount of damage on it and gem for spell damage and still maintain 202 hit cap. Even as our affliction lock looks to going Mal/Ruin he will not regem his gear because of the benefit that he gets for every spell but mainly his dots. He pulls an average of 1000-1200dps on stand and nuke fights but on the fights where we're moving around a lot his DPS lowers but his damage done is not that far below the rest of our casters.

Over all crit and damage will come on the gear in higher content. For now it's really not all the important. Theoretically it looks better but consider what it's not affecting and theory and reality don't always match up 100%.

[Benriksen]

Thanks for the help there, this will help me out a bit in choosing new gear. I'm curious about this male/ruin spec though. Is it basicly the DS/SnF spec of supporting warlocks? As in most hit comes straight from gear, not gems. I'll do some searching but if anyone has links about it that would be very helpful.

[Lylie]

More or less yes. To put it mildly it's the gear dependent affliction build. Kinda silly. There is a base level of crit that makes up for the loss of UA. From working on it for my affliction lock it's around 1400 spell damage and 15% crit full raid buffed.

[Theleb]

Male/Ruin is as Lylie says something of the trade off between the outright DPS from Destro, and the support from Affliction (Generallly Shadow Embrace and Malediction).

Ruin beats UA after around hitcap, 1000+damage, and @13% crit (at the minimum) so above those figures there's absolutely no need to use unstable affliction, AND you can free up another debuff slot which is also a consideration...as for upgrades?

Its difficult to really point you in the direction of anything massively significant at your current progress level so just try to pick up the largest chunks of damage you can get your hands on.....the bracers are very good frankly and until you hit BT you'll be hard pressed to find any upgrades although DEFINATELY enchanting both those, and your gloves with +damage would be an excellent start

[Kneeo]

imo, you need more +spell hit. unless your other trinket is scryer's bloodgem or something. So go with either pure +spell hit in yellow slots, or orange damage/hit gems.

[MrUnderpants]

You really need to trade out your straight spell damage gems with +hit and +spell damage gems. Your losing alot of DPS from being so low on spell hit since your in teir 5 instances. Cant do much dps if your missing alot.