Solo Player Suddenly In Raid Guild... HELP!

[Grizzlid]

Yep, it’s another gear question.

I recently was plucked from WoW boredom by a random encounter with another player, and for the first time I’m in a solid Raiding guild. I went from never doing anything more than a 5 man to running three fifths of Karazhan before noon. But now, as a mostly solo player who has puttered around sort of aimlessly, I am sorely under-geared.

What I need is more than a referral to the wonderful Gearing Your Lock Guide. Based on the equipment I have now, what do I do to get the best Affliction Warlock Raiding kit together? I’m not even sure how to ask this question.

I was considering grinding rep with Scryers, but I’ve been told that the gear isn’t all that great. It’s also been suggested I go with badges for and grab some stuff that way (Boots of Incantations and Shroud of the Lore’nial), or get Tailoring leveled up and get the fancy Frozen Shadoweave stuff. More than a specific gear recommendation, I'm looking for a... Path To Greatness! Or, some such crap.

Frankly, it’s confusing as hell. I’m also going to post something about what build I should roll, and what cast order I might want to look at. HELP! I’ve got to get my act together!

Thanks to all who respond.

[KaizerSoze]

Your goal in gearing is to obtain 202 spell hit rating and then go for as much +damage as possible.

If I we're you I'd level tailoring for the Frozen Shadoweave boots and shoulders, find someone on your server who can make a Belt of Blasting and get it crafted. Grind up some bg's and get your hands on a Merc Gladiator Spellblade.

Try and get in on as many Attumen kills as possible and get the Handwraps of Flowing Thought or you can run Magister's alot and get the gloves from Kael, also get the Scarlet Sin'dorei robes from Kael and try and get a Timbal's focusing crystal from heroic Magisters.

If you can afford it get yourself a Blessings deck for Darkmoon card: Crusade. If you have the gold get the Spellstrike set crafted. If you can get in on Prince kills really try and go for a Ruby Drape of the Mysticant, it is really really good.

As for badges, get yourself an Orb of the Soul Eater and the Fused Nethergon Band. For bracers, search the ah for bracers of shadow wrath and try and find level 70 of shadow wrath bracers or you could grind some more bg's and get the Guardian's bracers. You should also get the Badge wand.

Get exalted with Scryers for the shoulder enchant and grab the exalted scryer ring also, socket most of your gear with Veiled Noble Topaz (when you go above 202 spell hit start socketing Runed Living Rubies), enchant all your gear with the relevant enchants and the epic spellthread for your pants. Switch to this spec
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

As you get more and more hit rating move points from suppression to Fel Concentration.

In raids your role is to do very maintainence free damage and boost the damage of all other casters in the raid with your malediction CotE. Get a DoT timer add-on and a threat meter (I suggest Omen), Keep all your DoT's up (including immolate), there is no specific rotation, your goal is to keep all your dots up most of the time and spam Shadow Bolt in between refreshing DoT's.

[Badas]

Bracers of Havok and Cloak of Black Void are good easily craftable blues items that help as well

[Devicus]

Originally Posted by KaizerSoze

Get exalted with Scryers for the shoulder enchant and grab the exalted scryer ring also

Getting exalted with your chosen faction should be done, no matter what your class, as the epic shoulder enchants are the only shoulder enchants you'll get. Much like getting revered with the right faction gets you a glyph for your head. (Shatar)

As for the spec, the above one is okay. Basically a spec with unstable affliction, shadow mastery, dark pact, siphon life, contagion improved corruption, and empowered corruption will give best boss DPS (mediocre trash DPS but if trash mobs are dying before your DoTs tick hard, a) just shadowbolt and b) it means you have plenty of DPS already and you burst DPS isn't missed) malediction is great for 25 mans, but for 10 mans is iffy, if there's any fire/frost/shadow/arcane users aside from you, using curse of elements with malediction will make you popular, though you sacrifice some of your own DPS in order to buff others. If you're in a melee/physical heavy group, use curse of doom on bosses. Odds are there'll be a shadow priest, moonkin or mage around though.

Personally I'd take 5/5 fel contentration, nightfall sucks anyway. Fel concentration won't help much with raiding but you're at the stage where soloing still yeilds gold for BoE upgrades. As such keeping a couple of solo talents without losing too much raid DPS (I'd say lose nightfall and 1 rank supression) is worth it. And when you get to netherspite, fel concentration becomes useful. (which is nice, netherspite is the most fiddly boss in kara)

A spec like this will carry you through kara (though eventually you'll find yourself reclaiming supression as you hit cap yourself, either grab intensity or buff) and through gruul and maggy. It may even last into TK and SSC for boss damage superiority, depending on when you do ZA, and when how quickly you accumulate badge loot.

Through trying hard, you can become viable for destruction pretty much off T4 loot and badge gear, but only just. It's best to stay affliction until you have ZA cleared or a couple of pieces of T5ish loot as well as a load of badge loot.

There is one thign I'd disagree with Kaizersoze on though.

[Theleb]

What gear do you have access to? What sort of cash do you have available for a respec into Tailoring and then power-levelling? How many badges do you have sat around? How much do you like to PvP?

Each one of the above provides a route to items that will be more than adequate for raiding with but it depends on YOU to go get them - you might not want a another reference to the gear guide but its there for a reason; it does list the ranking for each slot and of course then all you have to do is eliminate the items you can't get. Yep, its predicated towards destruction so with that in mind, and the spreadsheet open all you really need to do is work out which benefit affliction more - a modicum of homework will definately help you here because you'll learn which stats benefit which build and you can plan future upgrades accordingly

PvP for the S2 Spellblade and throw Soulfrost on it - while you're there get the S3 bracers and possibly look at one of the S4 necks. Your current is absolutely fine if you don't want to replace it.
Head - you're an engineer so go make the Destrucion Holo gogs, or pick up the Spellstrike Hood - or even the T4 from Prince.
Shoulders - Fel-tinged Mantle or T4 shoulders or S2 Shoulders depending on taste/availability
Cloak - Shadow Cloak from Morose, Ruby Drape from Prince.
Chest - Scarlet Robes from Heroic MGT are untouchable for their level - get the trinket from the 3rd boss while you're there.
Belt - Belt of Blasting
Trousers - Spellstrike or Badge of Justice, heck even Trial-Fire Trousers from Opera.
Boots - Boots of Incantations, Ruby Slippers from Karazhan
Trinkets - Icon of the Silver Crescent, Timbal's from MGT
OH - Orb of the Soul Eater
Wand - Trisfal Wand of Ascendancy, Black Stalk, Carved Witchdoctors Stick

All of that is without tailoring. If you go that route then just use the FSW Set.

Also, flick through this short guide:

Basic guide to Affliction DPS - The Warlocks Den Forums

Specs as discussed above are fine. Gem/enchant for +damage and +hit to take you to the cap and stack damage after that point...and above all practice. Affliction does take a little while to get used to (In terms of juggling dots, timing lifetaps/dark pact useage, and the ubiquitous Shadowbolt spam) so go kill Doctor Doom a few times for some practical experience.

[Alyrienne]

As an Affliction Warlock, 5/5 Suppression and 76 +hit is enough for a 99% hit chance for Affliction spells. You will still need more +hit and +crit for spamming Shadow Bolt while your DoTs are ticking away - 202 will get you a 99% hit chance on Destruction spells.

[Akasha]

Going to reopen this thread up. After chatting with Grizzlid, who contacted me calmly and politely after his thread closure, I've been able to better understand his reasons for posting the thread and learn more about the questions he had, which weren't laid out to begin with. The following is part of the discussion, which I am posting here (hope this is ok Grizzlid) so other members can also better understand the sort of help being sought with this thread.

I'm seeking advice on a "situation", if you will; a player who's never been able to get past a certain point. Re-reading my post, I should have focused on things like the amount of money I have and the amount of time I play, and made the question more specific to my issues. I'm seeking advice on what would probably best be described as a short-term and a long-term strategy that encompasses the entire game, this based on where I'm at right now. I would like to know things like the amount of grinding I'd need to do to get to this or that item, and how soon that item would be made obsolete by drops, that sort of thing. As a novice what I'm looking for would be described as more of a "path".

Experienced players could offer me an overall strategy to achieve my goals that would combine guide data with real world viability. For instance, I can look up gear in the guide, but if I'm going to be grinding rep for 2 months it's not going to happen. Or if I need 3000 gold to get to the level of tailoring required, I'm probably going to resort to completing dailies and quests to get the money as opposed to grinding rep. That's the sort of advice I was going to solicit with my follow up question. Hell, part of the problem was that until I read those responses I didn't know exactly what I wanted to ask.

Due to Grizzlid contacting and discussing his thread closure with me, I was given the above information which shows me this is more than just a 'I suck, tell me what to gear' thread, and as such have reopened it for continued discussion and assistance.

[MannyMo]

Originally Posted by Alyrienne

As an Affliction Warlock, 5/5 Suppression and 76 +hit is enough for a 99% hit chance for Affliction spells. You will still need more +hit and +crit for spamming Shadow Bolt while your DoTs are ticking away - 202 will get you a 99% hit chance on Destruction spells.

I used to be affliction and the route i followed was maxing out the hitcap via 5/5 supression and gems and slowly getting 202hitcap while removing the points from supression and regemming to spelldmg. Having 202 hit and points in supression is ofcourse a waste of points.

And as for other gear, i think Theleb made a nice summary of it. This all might be a bit hard to get in the beginning and you could aim for some items from the (non-) HC instances. For that list check out C-pimp's thread, i think all useable blues/epic's are listed in there.

Since there are some craftables worthwhile getting, you will need to spend some time in getting gold/mats. I don't know what your professions are, but if you are a tailor start grinding the primals for the cloth and always use the cooldowns. It's a good idea to start off as a spellcloth tailor so you get 2 spellcloth each time and when you have enough for the spellstrike hood/pants (which are hands down the best you can get when starting with raiding) switch to shadowcloth tailor so you can work on your frozenweave set. Reason for this is that using the frozenweave set, you are required to be a shadowtailor. And if you go shadowtailor first and you want your spellstrike set, you are bound to 1spellcloth per CD which will get you nowhere because you need 10 cloth per craft.

As for the grinding for gold/mats try to figure out what is the fastest way of getting gold/mats. It all depends on how much time you are available to grind for it. Always start with doing SSO dailies (even when you are exalted this is by far the easiest/fastest way of getting gold). After that figure out what's most efficient in terms of gold per hour. Ask guildies how they get fast gold, where to get certain mats google abit around. As example for grinding: You might need primal fires which are 30gold each on AH. When you farm them you get mayb 4 an hour, thats 120 gold per hour. But what you couldve done was farming primal waters where you couldve gotten 6 per hour (which also are 30gold each) so you couldve gotten 180gold per hour! You get the point i guess. Good luck in collecting!

[Grizzlid]

Great answers, all. I appreciate Akasha re-opening the thread, and for the most part I just want to thank him for all the things he does to make our game more enjoyable.

I'm actually doing pretty much all of the suggestions listed here in one way or another. It's looking like my path is set on Tailoring. I already specced Shadow, and I guess I will see what can be done about the spellcloth situation (excellent advice, and I've heard it no where else). Other than that, I think with dailies I will be able to get the mats to slap my Shadows Embrace set together without too much excruciating farming. Also, the Badge page on the site has given me some direction as well.

Again, thanks to all who responded - I've taken your advice and it's already paying off - and thanks to Akasha.

[Alsaladin]

Well when I was after the FSW and Spellstrike sets, I just farmed the mats and after i had been through all the CDs in my guild started asking on the trade channel (/2) for CDs. You can easily get the cloth you need like this in a week both Shadow and Spellcloth

I found better this way ;p